Текст книги "Invader"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

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

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

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

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

Jago pulled. With her greater strength.

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

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

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

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

"One still thinks —"

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

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

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

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

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

"One worried, nadi."

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

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

"In what?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It seems simple. Yes. No."

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

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

"Unfair," Jago declared finally.

"Unfair?"

"Words, words, words!"

"I've offended you."

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

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

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

"One asks – is there danger from Mospheira?"

"Why do you ask that?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Cutting one's own rope."

Count on it – mayhem and disaster translated amazingly well.

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

"Who? Hanks?" Rhetorical question.

"Barb-daja."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Jago. Still – maybe."

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

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

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

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

Say that for the situation.

CHAPTER 15

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damn the timing. Damnthe timing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"When does he usually wake?"

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

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

"Against your advice."

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

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

One began to get the idea.

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

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

"For two days," the second senior said.

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

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

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

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

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

"Because of changing measurement."

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

"Mostly," the senior astronomer interjected.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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