Текст книги "Precursor"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

“Danda-ji, thank you very much.” Bren leaned back as the others of the mission leaned back from the table to allow the tea to be served… not the entire pot, to be sure: Bindanda was a little baffled by the lack of a serving table, but Jago offered her help, holding the tray, so that tea arrived on the table with ceremony.

“Your health,” Bren said, lifting his small, very fragile, very antique cup, which its creator had surely never dreamed would circle the earth. He sipped. Relaxed. “Very much better.”

Chapter 14

It was one round of tea, a reasonable discussion, and a lengthy one, before a lengthy walk back, Banichi and Jago doubtless having learned a great deal of what was going on simply by listening, Bindanda mostly unenlightened, but having had ample chance to exchange pleasantries with Kate and Ben.

Bindanda had left the valuable tea set as a gift to the Mospheirans, properly to serve the tea, of course, and left empty-handed, doubtless confused and baffled by humans, considering the traditional manners of the ancient house that lent him, but mostly looking introspective… and surely to deliver an interesting report when once he found his feet on solid earth.

The meeting had ended much more reasonably than it had begun. They had all achieved civility, and the archive’s release as a goodwill gesture had become, instead of a flashpoint, a positive matter. They were very excited about that prospect… a little resentful that they hadn’t achieved it, but Kroger, the scientist who wanted her hands on that archive, and who now knew it was supposed to be available on the wall panel, was at least smiling and encouraged when they’d parted.

He had omitted to say, however, that the manner of it was not entirely Ramirez’ idea. And he hoped it never came out to the contrary.

Kaplan escorted them back, saw them safely into their section.

And—once the section door was shut, having Kaplan out and his party in with him, safe and secure in the foyer of their own small, comfort-adjusted section—Bren heaved a deep breath, undid buttons and surrendered his coat to Narani.

Supper was cooking… one couldn’t detect it before it was served, in the apartment back at Shejidan. Noble houses took great care not to have that homey, cottagelike state of affairs. But it smelled good; it smelled of home, tables, and comfort, and he was very glad, having had tea for lunch.

But otherwise a profitable day. A very agreeable day.

“Brief Tano and Algini, Nadiin-ji,” he said to Banichi and Jago. And to Narani, who handed the coat to Kandana: “We believe we’ve made progress.” He was cold, even chilled, as he went back into the depth of his room. He considered asking for a light coat, but he was too anxious to know what might have come through, and what might have come of the transmission of the archive… midnight, Cl had said. And he’d collapsed last night; had the meeting this morning…

He set up the computer again, breathing on his fingers between strokes, requested Mogari-nai of Cl, and after some small delay for authorization, got it, downlink, uplink, all in a burst.

A message had arrived from Tabini: it read: One expects further word and commends the paidhi on his achievement. Large files have reached Mogari-nai.

It was short, but went on to give dry notice of committee meeting outcomes, and a general minutes of the hasdrawad’s oversight committee on the second shuttle, a positive report. He was interested, but he set it aside.

Of all things, God help him, an advertisementhad made its way to Mogari-nai. He didn’t delete it. He wanted to know how it had threaded its way into his account.

A message from Toby: I’m in the capital. Delayed again. Rotten weather.

A message from Mogari-nai: We are receiving an immense download of information from the ship which is directed toward the Mospheiran President and to the aiji. Under prior agreements we are retransmitting without question or examination. We are scheduling the information, however, in packets, to allow normal flow of commerce.

That was it. God, that was it. That was the total load, the fabled archive, and Ramirez had kept his word.

At least he hopedto God it was the archive and not some diabolically designed set of files designed to seize control of the communications system. The planet wasn’t as vulnerable to computer attack as the ship or the station; and the mainland far less so than the island. To send anything that massive that was less than honest would not be the action of an authority ever wanting cooperation or productivity from the mainland.

It had to be going through. Disseminated.

“Cl, do I have access now to all those files you transmitted to Mogari-nai?”

“ Mogari-nai?” The rendition of the name as he’d pronounced it was almost unrecognizable. “ Yes, sir, captain’s cleared it to your E10, as of… 0200 hours.”

Last night he’d slept, early, exhausted, completely. He’d found only scattered files this morning, and hadn’t penetrated the communication system. “I’ll need precise instructions, Cl. This isn’t familiar equipment.”

“Easy-do, sir, just punch E10, that’s the E and the 10 and then just S for scan and V for view, M for menu.”

The whole literature of mankind? The missing technical files? The accumulated station records? Design for a starship? Press M for menu?

“I don’t suppose Jase Graham would be available at this hour. He’d be very helpful with this.”

A hesitation. “ Jase Graham isn’t available right now, sir.”

Continuing debrief, several days of it. He was disheartened about that.

But in Ramirez’s place, he’d certainly do the same… wouldn’t allow Jase contact with people whose veracity he was testing. He only hoped Jase was getting sleep and meals in the process. It would have been a perfect cap to the day if he could sit down to a supper with Jase.

But, God, the archives!

“Message for him,” he told Cl. “Same message: say I called; tell him call me; I’d like to see him. No emergency, rather friendly reasons. A little help with this panel.”

“Yes, sir. I can contact the captain, sir, if you need a technician.”

Emphatically not, not with Banichi’s rig across the hall.

“I think I can solve it myself, Cl, thank you.” It wasn’t an unknown principle. M for menu was a good start. “Thank you very much.”

He punched out on the contact, went across the hall to the security post where Banichi and Jago were conversing with

Tano and Algini. “The missing archive. E10, the M key…” His security knew the Mospheiran alphabet, read it with some fluency by now. “Have a look at it, such as you have time to do.”

“Yes,” Tano said with a wondering look. “Yes, nadi.”

He wanted to see it for himself; but he couldn’t distract himself with it, couldn’t slide aside from present business in a meander through human archives, if that was the treasure he had won. He had done what he could. Toby by now must have gotten through; Jase couldn’t reach him. Mercheson if she had authority and access to communications might call him, but he rather thought she was engaged in exactly the same business as Jase: talking to her captains.

The cold by now had gotten to his muscles, a thorough chill as he walked out, back across to his apartment. His teeth were all but chattering as he passed Narani, told him he’d shower before supper.

Kandana and Bindanda showed up before he could do more than shed the shirt. They gathered up boots and clothing, offered a bathrobe to lie about his shoulders for the four-pace walk to the shower… proprieties, proprieties.

He turned sideways to enter, shedding the robe, closed the cabinet door, activated the jets at the temperature he’d last set, and shivered convulsively as cold water in the pipes came out first.

He’d been utterly unprepared except by the life he’d lived.

He’d guessed. He’d estimated. Solo, he’d pulled up his best recollections and his ideas to cover one damned serious, selfish mistake on the plane to the mainland, when he’d antagonized Kroger.

He’d made another mistake over the last several months, not foreseeing what Tabini was up to, not anticipating how Tabini would react when Jase did go up.

And he’d just now promised two parties an elaborate, jury-rigged structure of hopes, all with a manic focus, memorizing details, freezing concepts in his mind, trying to patch his mistakes with the authority he’d been handed…

He’d assumed more and more and more details could be true… and now the whole structure of his plans evaporated, flew apart, deserted him so that for an instant he didn’t know what he’d done or proposed or agreed to, whether it was well-thought or whether Tabini had a lunatic dealing his foreign policy. Millions of lives and two species’ futures were at stake, and for the duration of his arguments with both Ramirez andKroger, God help the world, he’d enjoyedthe dealing. He’d proceeded on an adrenaline rush the same as a downhill race, just coping with what came up moment by moment.

He began to shake all over, suddenly doubted everything he knew, everything he’d done. He desperately wanted Jase with him to consult, he desperately wanted to talk to Tabini at this juncture. Most of all he wanted to know what he’d done and what he’d agreed to, because he couldn’t for a second remember a damned thing of how it fit with reality.

He slipped down to the bottom of the shower, tucked up while the water finished its cycle. Long after the hiss of the jets had cut off and long after he’d informed his body, he wasn’t truly cold, intermittent tremors rolled through his limbs like waves of the earthly sea.

Who am I to decide?

Most of all, what have I become, to likethis? To gamble with the whole world’s future?

Tabini. Tabini. Tabini, who’s the only power fitto rule the world.

His own species calls him ruthless.

What do they call me?

I can’t let anyside dominate the other, for its own sake; but, God, God, God! where in hellhave I appointed myself to impose conditions on the world, the ship, the station?

“Bren-ji?” he heard Jago say, through the door, and, sitting there, trying to control the shivers, he wondered how long his servants and his staff had fretted before one of them appointed herself to say something.

But the next step was his staff dismantling the door; and that would never do, never in the world do, at all.

Who was he to do what he’d done? He was the man in the middle, that was who he was, the one officer two nations had appointed to stand between them. He was appointed to do exactly what he’d done. He’d reacted strongly when Kroger, who didn’t know what she was doing, had challenged him in his own territory, and he’d jerked her about in hopes of her realizing there were dangers. He hoped it had done some good.

More, Ramirez had leaped to agree with him… and it wasn’t as if they hadn’t been talking for three years, as if they didn’t know what, essentially, they faced in the way of costs and necessities. Jase knew, he knew, Ramirez knew, and Shawn Tyers and the President of Mospheira knew that the station had to operate and the present situation had to keep some sort of balance, or the world went to hell and took Phoenixand two or three species with it, granted these far-space aliens had a future at stake, too.

He’d spoken for the balance.

He’d stolen some of what the Mospheirans wanted, control over the station. He’d given the Mospheirans what Tabini could have gotten for himself but which would have proved a poison pill: control over businesson the station, as the humans in question expected to exchange goods and services. They’d sell hot dogs in any season, and atevi would shudder and look the other way as they’d learned to do, contenting themselves with ship building and station building.

He’d committed the atevi economy to another long push, but the social structure hadn’t taken damage from the last one, in building the shuttles… the provinces had thrived, in fact. The complaint of certain associations had been not enough public projects to go around.

The station and the ship was the answerto what followed the explosion of the economy in the shuttle project. In a far lower-consumption society than Mospheira's, what did he dobesides go to neon light and fast food like Mospheira’s north shore, in order to keep the atevi economy moving at its breakneck, profitable pace?

Easy. He built a starship.

He gaveit to the Pilots’ Guild, true; but if you took any vehicle and compressed it to a cube… you had a lot of scrap worth so much the kilo. It was the labor and the shaping that had value; most of all, it was the learning that had value. They paid the raw materials and the labor and gained the knowledge and the technical skill with no R&D, sure designs, incremental learning of new theory…

Damned right someone had to keep a tight lid on the economy; damned right it was time to sit down and hammer out answers until a handful of translators, diplomats, an economist, a ship’s captain, and a damned angry woman from the Science Department all agreed they could keep the station running, get the needful things done, and assure that things in their respective cultures didn’t blow up.

It was as he’d said. Goodthat Kroger was still to some degree mad at him and good he was as suspicious as he was of her. Angry, she wouldn’t fall worshiping at his feet or take his seniority or his solutions without question. He no longer thought she was entirely Gaylord Hanks’ minion, but she had that mind-set. Aliens and the devil were nearly congruent in her thinking, at least foundationally, he suspected. Fear was implicit in her attitudes, and those might be from the cradle. But a scientific career overlay whatever she’d absorbed from earlier influences. The woman had a mind, and a keen one.

Win her and she was an asset. More, she was someone who could talk to the most radical self-interests on the island, from the inside, trusted. Toss Lund into that equation: Tom Lund had influence in Commerce, and could be invaluable in moving business interests.

Tabini, meanwhile, put the brakes on volatile atevi interests on the mainland and dragged the lords, resisting, into an interdependent age and a boiling-hot economy. Mospheira and even some atevi might curse Tabini for a tyrant; but Tabini, alone of leaders, had a clear concept of how to steer this creaking, shuddering arrangement past the shoals of unmitigated self-interest on either side of the straits; and the Durant-Tyers combination on the island could move Mt. Adams, if it had to declare an emergency. It still had political punch. It just couldn’t use it prematurely, on a non-issue.

And God, this was going to be a big issue—full cooperation with the atevi and the Pilots’ Guild that trampled cherished party dogmas on both sides of the divide.

“Bren-ji!” A thump.

“Yes, nadi!” He hastily levered himself up to his feet, in case Jago should break down the outer door and leave them to explain the wreckage. Banged his head. “Perfectly fine, nadi. Thinking! One does that in baths…”

“Dinner will be ready,” Jago said, undeterred, still suspicious. “Will you wish a delay, Bren-nadi?”

“No,” he said. “No, no such thing. I’ll be right out.” He had banged his head on an unfamiliar water-nozzle, checked his hand for blood in the running water, and found to the negative.

He left the shower stark naked, put the robe on for respect to the servants’ prim propriety—and respect, too, for the imposition Jago didn’t make on his time or his mind with sexual demands. She was simply concerned, was simply there… he was profoundly grateful for that, still prone to shivers, but had them under control.

It was still exhaustion, he decided. He needed sleep. He’d slept last night; he thought he could sleep this time. He wondered about asking Jago into bed, just for the warmth, just for the company.

A damned too-small bed.

“Ordinarily, alone, you take less time,” she remarked, “Bren-ji.”

“Sometimes I think,” he said, still thinking of bed, wanting that, after the enervating heat of the water, more than he wanted food right now; that was itself a cue. He’d learned to pace himself. He tried, at least. “Thank you, Jago-ji.”

“There is supper,” she cued him, “of which Narani is quite proud.”

How could he complain? How could he beg off and fall into bed.

It was, he decided, a good day, a very good day. Bindanda came in with Kandana to array him in his more casual attire, still with a light coat, but less collar, less lace to have to keep out of the soup. Together with Jago they walked to the room dedicated as a dining hall, where Narani had indeed worked a wonder, setting out a formal service… even a setting of cloisonné flowers in a jade bowl.

Banichi came in.

“Tano and Algini have chosen supper together in the office, nadi,” Banichi reported. “But Rani will supply them very well, all the same.”

“Sit, please,” Bren said. Banichi and Jago sat, gingerly, in straight-backed flexible red chairs that made them look like adults at a child’s table; but the plastic chairs held, and the first course followed, a truly magnificent one, difficult of preparation.

“Narani-ji, a wondrous accomplishment. Do say so to the staff.”

“Honored, nandi.”

One could not possibly talk business past so grand an offering. And it did put strength in him.

Afterward, afterward, there was a little chance to linger, to declare themselves in a sitting room, while the dishes disappeared, while a very fine liqueur splashed into glasses, clear as crystal. Banichi and Jago sat on the floor, on luggage, against the wall; it was doubtless more comfortable than the red chairs. Bren tried the same, on the other side, and accepted a glass from Kandana, from a small serving tray.

“The health of the aiji,” he said, a custom they had learned to share.

“In this place,” Banichi said, and they all three drank, the merest flavor against the lips.

“One would wish a little consultation on figures,” Bren said. Banichi, who hadn’t known the sun was a star because it hadn’t affected his job in those days, did know every potential factional line in the Western Association, and did know the fine points of industry and supply. “I intend to do some work if I can stay awake. You haven’t found any visual monitoring.”

“None within the rooms,” Banichi said, “but we remain uncertain about the corridor.”

“I have the structural plans,” he said, to Banichi’s thoughtfully astonished glance. “I am a fount of secrets,” Bren said. “I should have purged the contents of the machine before we left; nothing that the ship doesn’t contain, or shouldn’t. Nothing that isn’t duplicated in the archive, or available to them for the asking: I think a search should turn it up. I’ve no trouble with them knowing whatI know, but I’m a little more worried about them knowing thatI know certain things. The very size of the archive buries things; but we hadpart of the archive. I do know the location of the search key in the original archive. It used to be extraneous information. Now… not so.”

“One completely comprehends,” Jago said.

“Have you followed much of what we said today?”

“And the day before. A good deal of it,” Banichi said. “Does the paidhi wish an opinion?”

It was a measure of the relationship of confidence that had grown between them that Banichi did ask him that question, and would give it thoroughly.

“Yes. Very much so.”

“I think the aiji will approve,” Banichi said. “I think he will very much approve.”

“One hopes,” Bren said fervently. Do you think so? welled up from the human heart, but one didn’t ask Banichi obvious questions. “Thirteen more days before the mission goes back down. But we ourselves may go down and up again on the shuttle’s return flight. Can we manage it? I know we have materials tests that need to run. But if we place a permanent presence here, theycan manage those tests much more quickly.”

“Indeed,” Banichi said.

“Shall we leave an establishment here?” Jago asked.

“I hesitate to ask it of staff. They didn’t agree to a protracted stay.”

“They agreed to accompany you, nadi. And if we establish our security in these quarters, I would be reluctant to interrupt it for any reason. This is our center of operations, however we branch out from here.”

“I think so, too,” Bren said.

“Tano and Algini would stay, perhaps Kandana. That would suffice.”

Bindanda’s role as reporting to Lady Damiri’s irascible and very powerful uncle was in fact an asset: to abandon Bindanda up here unable to report… Tatiseigi would immediately suspect it was no accident.

And the old man probably knew that they knew Bindanda was a spy. Between great households there werecourtesies. And some courtesies they could not violate.

While Narani… a possibility as head of a continuing station presence… yet he was an old, old man.

“We should ask Narani,” Bren said. “Do offer him the post, but stress I value him equally going with me. I would trust his experience in either post. How is he faring?”

“Very well,” Jago said. “He worries excessively that you and Jasi-ji were not accorded greater respect. He’s quite indignant the officials haven’t come here to pay their respects. He wonders if he has failed in some particular. One attempts to assure him otherwise.”

There was some humor in the statement. Narani was exceedingly set in his devotion, but it was not an outrageous sentiment, in the atevi mind-set.

“By no means has he failed,” Bren murmured. “These are not atevi. And for the two of you, for Tano and Algini, too, I understand their manners; I give way to them more than I ought, perhaps, but I still believe we will gain what we need.”

“We defer to your judgment.”

“Tell the staff. I would willingly place Narani or Kandana in charge here, with the understanding this area must remain sacrosanct. Jase may come here. Or Yolanda.”

“One wishes Jase were available now,” Jago said.

“They still refuse me contact with him. I intend to see him before we go down.”

“So the paidhi, too, doesn’t trust implicitly.”

“I don’t trust. I find out.”

Banichi gave a wry smile. “We saw two captains,” Banichi said, accurately nailing one of his apprehensions, with all the psychological infelicity that expressed. Never… never in atevi management of a situation would there be fourcaptains in charge over anything, and two, by no means.

“They don’t see the difficulty,” Bren said.

“Yet even on the earth we have dealt with the same two aloft. We never hear from the others. Should we be concerned?”

“Two captains,” Jago added, “two days until a second meeting…”

“It’s natural to them, these twos. They don’t find infelicity in the number. They don’t think it insulting or ominous.”

“They have not sought to discover our opinions, either,” Jago said.

“Baji-naji,” Banichi added in a low voice, which was to say that there wasa duality in the atevi mythos, the dice throw of chance and fortune, that black-and-white duality that governed gamblers, computers, and the reach into space. Twos allowed division. Twowas implicit in the dual presence, and dual absence.

“Baji-naji,” Bren echoed, thinking, in fact, of the old troubles with the Guild. Ramirez on every point was far better than their fears of the Guild… thus far. Ramirez had made negotiation possible, was, indeed, consistently the one they dealt with by radio; a handful of times with Ogun, a few with Sabin, very few words with Tamun.

Ramirez saidthat Guild agreement was a foregone conclusion… and it certainly would be hard to find disadvantage to the ship in having all their requests met, the same way the shuttle had leaped into production, the same way those files were going down.

But Banichi and Jago remained uneasy, in the strangeness of the culture… in the lack of relaxation, and the infelicity of numbers. Could atevi ignore that, psychologically?

And Jago was right. Might they not have thought of that, and tried to amend it? Three years in contact with the world might have taught them something.

Hecouldn’t ignore the duality, for all of those reasons: the Pilots’ Guild was in some senses an autocracy, but it was an autocracy on a twenty-four-hour, four-watch schedule, with fourcaptains who shared absolute power on a time clock; and they’d consistently heard from the two seniormost… on the surface that was good; but in the subsurface, Jago was right, and Banichi was. It did raise questions.

“We’ve agreed for three years,” Bren said. “Most compelling, they have reason to deal with us, the best reason… supposing they’re telling the truth, supposing Jase is telling the truth, which I do believe: they at least haven’t time to start a war here. And they are sending down the very large files. I’ve heard from the Messengers, and they confirm it. The local communications post says I can access the files here, just as Ramirez said.”

“And we shall be building that second ship for them,” Banichi said. “Do we understand that is still agreed?”

“Yes.” There wasn’t a thing yet the atevi hadn’t pried apart and learned, not least of it the mathematics, not least of it computers, which they were taking in their own direction. “I have the commission from the aiji to agree to this, nadihi; I don’t say I’m without misgivings.” One couldn’t say, of all things, half have agreedin the atevi language: it came out an oxymoron, agreement meaning agreement. “We haven’t seen all of the captains; we assume their agreement. Let them teach us how to build a starship. Atevi have something as great to teach them, Nadiin-ji. If they’ve started a war with strangers, then we and the Mospheirans have very important things to teach them. The Mospheiran economy and the mainland economy… both have things to teach them about how to build. We can’t be the same as these ship-humans, but we don’t need to be. We won’t be.” He caught himself using we, as he used it in his thoughts. “Atevi don’t need to be. And atevi won’t be.”

They listened to him very soberly, and remained silent a moment after.

Then Jago said, “So, this starship. Shall we have one, too?”

“If the aiji wills,” he said. That was the answer to all official policy; and he knew what Jago asked: separate command, on the station, was a problem. Establish another aiji and there was a potential rivalry within the aishidi’tat, an unsettling of the balance of power. “But with atevi, every outpost, every separated community must find honest aijiin who can agree with the aiji in Shejidan for good and logical reasons; as we may have to find an honest lord to command a starship. A hundred, two hundred, a thousand years from now, who knows what will be possible for any of us?”

“Perhaps we’ll all be so virtuous there’ll hardly be aijiin, or presidents,” Jago said.

“One doubts it,” Banichi said.

“More than starships, Nadiin-ji, far more than starships is the skill to absorb change, and atevi do excel at that. Atevi managed the resolution of the War. We, Mospheirans and atevi, wrote the Treaty of Mospheira, and the atevi economy every year makes technology transfer an asset, not a detriment. It’s taken two hundred years to refine the economy to do that. Now we absorb an immense rate of change without social upheaval.”

“Without much social upheaval,” Banichi said.

“Give or take what happened three years ago. But to accomplish what atevi and Mospheirans have done, Nadiin-ji, welding together two completely different economies, peacefully, prosperously, that’s no small thing.”

“No,” Banichi said, “nor managed by fools, as delicate as it is.”

The mathematical gift of atevi was prodigious. They hadn’t needed computers at the start of the relationship, and in the last few decades of this two-century partnership, the University and the Foreign Office on Mospheira had stalled… very, very fearful of releasing computers into the information pipeline.

They had done it, truth be told, because atevi knew aboutcomputers and had begun to understand them as more than an aid for humans. As trade proliferated, the economy expanded, the population bloomed, and—second truth—the Mospheiran economy could no longer fine-tune itself fast enough to sustain its more advanced industries once atevi competed with them, unless there was closer contact. Atevi, who made a rug or a vase to stay in the economy for centuries, had discovered a use for fast food and ephemeral gains… as a blunt-force weapon in an economic war and as a useful communal experience in an ethnically diverse province.

Highways had once started wars. Trains were the appropriate answer.

Computers had helped atevi understand how humans perceived the universe. Atevi were reinventing them, hand over fist.

But dared one think of a space station and a starship as the equivalent of a provincial fast food chain, feeding a carefully-modulated interprovincial money flow?

They sipped their liqueur, and he had his misgivings.

The banking system, with its new computers, was set up to do that kind of calculation down to the small exchanges. Coinage as such was one of those imports from the human side of the straits, more token than intrinsically valued.

Coinage was going to be a problem on the space station, getting crew into possession of coinage was another question.

And within the aishidi’tat there were questions. Provinces, however loosely they defined borders, still had borders in terms of economic interest, and that was going to be a touchy problem.

They had to be careful of the ethnic composition of the work force the aiji sent, keeping the provinces and great houses from seeing advantage to their rivals; and keeping the ubiquitous number-counters from seeing calamity in obstinate human dualities. Computers, God knew, had been a controversy in that regard.

He felt a headache at the mere thought of the provincial lords. The hasdrawad. The tashrid. The committees. Mospheira was not alone in its proliferation of committees.

“So,” Banichi said, in this post-supper discussion, “we shall set up, shall we, nadi, as a permanent installation? And then, shall Tano and Algini look to stay?”

Tano and Algini struggled to learn the language. But outside of Banichi and Jago themselves, whom he would not give up, there was no choice, much as he hated the whole idea of leaving atevi unbuffered up here, without him, even for a few weeks.