Текст книги "Peacemaker"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Unwise, his advisors said, pointing out that the Northern Association was not the best bargain on its own, being small and frequently divided into factions, and that Lord Tatiseigi had enemies among the aiji’s strong supporters, some of whom had perfectly eligible daughters for perfectly sensible contract marriages.

Besides, such a strong affiliation with Lord Tatiseigi would smell strongly of his giving in to the aiji-dowager and falling under her control. Damiri-daja’s youthful actions had gained notoriety, and painted her as a creature of flightiness, shallowness, and hot temper.

Tabini-aiji ignored all of the advisors and married her. The quarrels with his wife matched, in reputation, his quarrels with the aiji-dowager—a fact which leaked out by the ancient sources—servants—and not, thankfully, the news services on the television the Conservatives so despised.

As aiji, he did request restrictions on emissions on Mosphei-ra and Crescent Island. He also instituted air traffic control, greatly antagonizing the number-counters, who were powerful especially in certain regions of the aishidi’tat, and powerful among the Conservatives. He clamped down on the Messengers’ Guild, which had developed some internal problems and was under accusation of graft and other misdeeds. He supported regional lords against encroachments by neighbors, stating that land questions had been settled definitively by the charter of the aishidi’tat and he was taking that as the final answer.

He attempted to exert Shejidan’s authority over the Marid, which remained a problem. He established a peaceful relationship with the East, under Ilisidi’s governance of Malguri.

He gained all sorts of minor concessions from the new paidhi and greatly annoyed the Conservatives by sending blueprints of numerous trivial machines to the Scholars’ Guild.

He refused to allow Filing on any monetary matter, until he had had testimony from officials of the Treasurers’ Guild. The Assassins’ Guild protested its own prerogative. He maintained his position, and the rule held.

And he gained Bren-paidhi’s cooperation in increasing his communication with the Mospheiran government, despite the rise of anti-atevi sentiment by certain groups in the island enclave.

iv

<> One reason for the stir among the radical groups on Mospheira was precisely the improved relations between the mainland and Mospheira. The radicals wanted separation, not cooperation—and they were increasingly upset by the paidhi’s actions. They always made their greatest political gains by alarming the public, and elements of that party took to the airwaves with a campaign of rumor mixed with sufficient facts to make people uneasy. The paidhi at times ran a certain risk in his visits to Mospheira, but Mospheiran tradition forbade any overt display of protection.

v

<> Things were going fairly well, however . . . until without any warning the starship Phoenix arrived at the space station. The Mospheirans suddenly found the authority of the ship over their heads and the Phoenix captains found that all the humans that should be on the station were down on the planet.

Tabini-aiji suddenly doubted every assurance the Mospheiran government had given him.

vi

<> Phoenix made radio contact with Mospheira. Liberals were extremely anxious—having no wish to have another argument with a ship authority which had no understanding of them or the atevi.

Radical groups on Mospheira were literally dancing in the streets. They wanted instant access to space—they called it rescue—and they wanted Phoenix to threaten the aishidi’tat and remove the Mospheiran government.

The Phoenix captains, being no fools, took a look at the cities on both sides of the strait. Their prosperity surpassed any expectation, but their cultural difference was clear, even from space. Phoenix received a rational though cautious response from the Mospheiran government, asking who was in command and what their condition was and whether they needed help.

The ship-aijiin overheard the demands of the radicals in their monitoring. They saw nothing on the planet to indicate hostilities except in the radicals themselves.

The government of Mospheira was certainly deeply perturbed at the entry of a new power into their affairs, but they were reassured that Phoenix accepted the situation, was not in imminent distress, and was anxious not to involve itself in local politics.

Phoenix was upset that the station was in serious decay—the captains were very anxious to see it operating again. Their interests, they assured Mospheira, were only in their ship and its safety. Phoenix wanted a port.

The Mospheiran public, and in fact the government, remained a little fearful that the ship might try to become their government.

That was what the radicals wanted to happen. They saw a return to space as everything they wanted . . . including access to advanced weaponry.

The Mospheiran government was equally determined that the people it should send to space, if it could send anyone, would be those most worried about the ship’s intentions, the most determined to secure Mospheiran control of the station.

By no means did they want to let the radical groups get into direct association with the Phoenix crew.

vii

<> We were highly upset with the sudden turn of events, and suspicion still ran deep. Bren-paidhi assured Tabini-aiji and the aiji-dowager that the Mospheiran government had not expected the return of the ship, and that Mospheira was determined to gain control of the station, preventing the ship from doing so. Mospheira, he said, was determined to prevent the radicals getting to space or laying hands on advanced technology.

He said further that the only way to preserve atevi rights in this situation was for atevi to speak to the ship-folk directly, invite them to negotiate, and make it clear that the local authority was the aishidi’tat, not Mospheira. They should in fact offer to ally with the Mospheirans in their demands for complete control of the station, and be prepared to share that authority with them.

There was one drawback to everybody’s plans, of course, and it was an old one. None of the starship pilots knew how to fly in an atmosphere. None of the atevi or Mospheiran pilots, who well knew how to fly in atmosphere and gravity, knew how to fly in space.

There were no ship-construction facilities at the mothballed station, which had no population and no workers.

And critical natural resources necessary to build a spacecraft were available only on the mainland. Mospheira had been trading for them—but the mainland could cut that off cold at any time.

Phoenix had the blueprints—the complete library in the data storage of the starship. But atevi had the mines, the factories, and the resources.

Negotiation and unprecedented cooperation between Mospheira and the mainland built a small fleet of shuttles.

Negotiation with the Mospheirans and Phoenix gave half the station to atevi, half to humans.

Tabini would ultimately set an atevi lord, myself, Lord Geigi of Maschi clan, to be in charge of the half of the station.

But before that day came a great upheaval.

The technology that came with the shuttle plans brought massive change to the economy of both Mospheira and the mainland. It required new materials, computers, new plants—it brought all manner of things that poured new goods into the hands of Mospheirans. Of course denial of access agitated the radicals of Mospheira, who most wanted to be lords of space—a situation neither the liberal Mospheirans nor any ateva ever wanted to have happen.

But on the mainland, among us, the shock was as much cultural as economic. For two hundred years the paidhiin had carefully brought technology onto the mainland—items like telephones, and, lately, airplanes, plastics, and transistors. These were benign in most ways—beneficial, unless one asked the older folk.

Then the space program poured new materials and new concepts down from the sky, advice telling us where to mine, with new ways of doing so, telling us how to manufacture, and offering us modern ceramics, and even dropping down certain materials from space.

All this challenged us philosophically. Traditional numbers-causality and the mediaeval concept of astronomy met starfaring equations and a universe that clearly did not consist of a clockwork sky dome and an ether that surrounded the sun and planets. That realization upset the Conservatives . . . and the paidhi-aiji had to open a clerical office simply to answer the letters from people asking, for instance, if a shuttle taking off would let the atmosphere escape.

And there was the politics of it all, which fell on Tabini-aiji. Some districts where the ecological impact would be minimal or which had transportation advantages were awarded manufacturing facilities, rousing resentments from those equally deserving who did not get such facilities—and of course there were areas that wanted none of it, and bitterly resented the economic advantage to those who had such industry.

The fractures in atevi society began to multiply.

On both sides of the straits, people found the whole world changing.

Then the ship-captains admitted the existence of another colony out in deep space, their Reunion Station, which they had never mentioned. This was especially disturbing to the Mospheirans. Phoenix next confessed that their reason for coming back to the Earth now was a need to put the Reunion population somewhere.

Why? the world asked.

Then Phoenix made a third and terrible admission: they had, they said, met hostile strangers in space, who might attack Reunion.

Some on both sides of the strait were inclined to tell Phoenix that they regretted the distress of these people very much, but they were not going to give permission to bring the Reunioners to this world.

Then Phoenix made yet another admission, the infelicitous fourth—that, in its own library, Reunion Station had the location of the atevi sun, and if Reunion fell—the Earth of the atevi might see these hostile strangers arrive here.

viii

<> In the urgency of building the shuttle fleet, the mainland had seen change after change, wealth had poured into places of poor land that had not had wealth, and society had become increasingly unstable, but the alternative—having decisions taken in the heavens without atevi participation—was insupportable.

Tabini-aiji had already pushed the citizenry to the limits of their patience when he found out what the ship-folk had confessed. He was angry. And now he was suspicious that neither atevi nor Mospheirans had been given the truth. He decided to take strong action to find out the situation in space, and be sure that things were as the Phoenix captains said they were. He charged Bren-paidhi, who knew humans, and the aiji-dowager, who would not be put off with lies, to go find out the truth. And because he now knew that the news of the ship’s deception would bring his household increasingly under threat, he sent his son, both to learn the new knowledge, to understand humans, and to be taught by the woman who had taught him.

It was a desperate dice-throw, with no knowledge of the scale of the universe, or the fact that the ship could not communicate across that distance, or how hard and dangerous it would be.

ix

<> Tabini-aiji made a decision that shocked the aishidi’tat and revised all calculations. He set all his scattered household out of reach of his enemies: his son, the aiji-dowager, who had ruled the aishidid’tat more than once, and the paidhi-aiji, who could understand humans.

He had also set a technologically adept atevi population in the heavens, governed by Lord Geigi, who had the ability to reach the Earth if he were given a target and an order.

If he himself were to die, Tabini-aiji reasoned—his grandmother and his son would gain power in the heavens, come back, and take back the aishidi’tat. If they failed to return, then Geigi and the atevi in the heavens would declare an aijinate, contact reliable lords on the Earth, and reshape the aishidi’tat in whatever way it had to be shaped to preserve atevi control of the world.

Tabini-aiji did not, however, intend to die. He had reduced his household by two. He became more cautious, was far less frequently in transit, far less exposed to threats from unstable persons. He had not been advised of any Filings against his supporters, nothing of the sort, even though he daily expected it. He had begun to suspect something was being organized, but if it was, it was not behaving in any legitimate way. It had the flavor of the Marid—but the Marid was troubled by none of the issues that troubled the rest of the aishidi’tat.

He asked the Guild to investigate, and they reported only the usual persons, the usual statements, the usual activities, none of which reached to Shejidan. He relied on the information he was getting from the Guild—and from the ship-paidhi Yolande Mercheson—who may have failed to understand one quiet warning, from a source who did not sign the letter.

The ship left the station. The aiji-dowager, the heir, and the paidhi-aiji went with it, not to return for two years.

But—perhaps it was the note given the ship-paidhi that had alarmed the conspirators, or perhaps the indications that the aiji was taking precautions and might discover who they were: rumors grew more frequent than fact. Some believed humans had kidnapped the dowager and the heir. Some said the ship had never left and they all were dead.

Within the year, the conspirators moved. They intended to assassinate Tabini-aiji in his residence. They discovered he was not there. They correctly guessed he might have gone to Taiben, and they attempted to strengthen their assault there—but that entailed some confusion. Murini of the Kadagidi had already proclaimed himself aiji, and Tabini was not dead. The attacks were simultaneous, to control all means to reach the heavens: the shuttles, the airport at Shejidan, the dish at Mogari-nai. The conspirators seized the shuttles being serviced. And they seized the radio station. They believed that Lord Geigi had thus been removed as a threat, with no means to replace the shuttles or to threaten the world, because they believed there were no mines in the heavens and that there would be no communication with the heavens because they held Mogari-nai.

Tabini and Damiri narrowly escaped from Taiben, but their bodyguards did not.

Rather than go to the neighboring Atageini estate and bring Lord Tatiseigi into danger, too—they crossed the Kadagidi’s own territory and used the skills Tabini-aiji had learned in Malguri to hunt and survive, making no contacts at all for a year.

The conspirators were hunting them everywhere they could think of. The last place the Kadagidi expected Tabini-aiji to be was on their own borders.

The atevi on the space station meanwhile began to plot what they could do with only one shuttle, and there was a question of whether to land it on Mospheira and send a mission to contact Tabini-aiji.

But Lord Geigi received repeated assurances from the humans that the aiji-dowager, the heir, and Bren Cameron were going to come back on a certain date, or close to it . . . and he argued against risking the one shuttle still in their control. He instead communicated with Mospheira, and with the assistance of Shugart-nadi and other humans, began to build communications and to position certain relay stations, made fearsome and self-defending, to unsettle the regime.

x

<> Phoenix had reached the Reunioners—and ended up facing an alien species, the kyo, bent on destruction of the human station which they viewed as an invasion. Nobody on Reunion had a clue how to open communication with foreigners of any sort. Neither, as happened, had the kyo themselves any concept of negotiation with outsiders. But having aboard Phoenix two species in cooperation, a skilled translator and diplomat, as well as a revered elder—the aiji-dowager; a child—the aiji’s heir; and ship’s personnel who had been living with atevi for a year—all this was persuasive. Two species working together as we did completely amazed the kyo. The kyo were willing to ask questions, particularly by the cooperation of a kyo who had come to communicate with the aiji’s young son. From this small beginning, each side found out what the other wanted.

It was agreed the Reunioners would be removed and transported out of kyo territory.

Phoenix did this, partly by force, partly by agreement of the Reunion population. The library was stripped, the population was removed, and Phoenix set out for the Earth of the atevi. The young gentleman, the aiji’s heir, achieved an education far beyond what the aiji envisioned in sending him: he dealt with the kyo authorities, became acquainted with the ship-aijiin, and also with several young Reunioner-folk, while pursuing his other studies under the personal supervision of the aiji-dowager—a teaching both traditional and thorough.

xi

<> Phoenix returned to the world, and in the same hour the aiji-dowager learned what had happened in her absence, that Tabini-aiji had been overthrown.

She did not delay. Lord Geigi urged her to all possible speed, fearing that Earth-based telescopes would show the ship docked at the station, and that once their enemies on the planet knew that the ship was back, they would expect the shuttle and know who might be on it.

The aiji-dowager, the aiji’s son, and Bren-paidhi took the shuttle which Lord Geigi had kept ready for their return. They landed on Mospheira, then with Mospheiran assistance, crossed onto the continent and went to Taiben and with Taibeni help, went on to Atageini territory.

Lord Tatiseigi opened his doors to them. Murini-aiji had instilled terror in the citizenry, but Lord Tatiseigi aided them with all his resources as the news of their return spread.

Tabini-aiji and Damiri-daja were not far away. They received word and arrived at Lord Tatiseigi’s estate.

Terror might have aided Murini at the first, but it had gained nothing but resentment from the citizenry. Once word spread that the aiji and his household were alive, that the humans had kept their word, and that the station aloft and the humans on Mospheira were indeed their allies, the people gained the courage to rise up in their hundreds of thousands and support Tabini-aiji and the aiji-dowager.

Unfortunately it was easier to restore the aijinate than to undo the damage Murini had done.

1. Geigi’s narrative is appended: see the Table of Contents.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

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