Текст книги "Deliverer"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“Patience, Tati-ji, patience. We have not yet told him,”

Great-grandmother said.

“Told me what, mani-ma?” They had drifted out into the hallway.

All the bodyguards were standing around them, now, those he wanted, and those he did not, not to mention Cenedi and Nawari, and Antaro and Jegari, and he really disliked that tone of voice everybody was using—had he daydreamed right through something important to him?

“You will keep your current rooms,” great-grandmother said.

“But I shall be leaving before daylight, to spend time at Tirnamardi, so we will say our good-byes now, young gentleman. When you wake, your father will be in residence, with staff you may not know—expect strange faces, but reliable persons. My caretaker staff has their orders to stay near and identify them to you during the transition.”

His heart had picked up its beats, faster and faster, and shock and anger first cooled, then heated his face, all in the space it took mani-ma to assault his whole life and his plans and dispose of them in a single, ridiculously easy stroke.

It was absolutely necessary, dealing with Great-grandmother, and in front of Uncle, to maintain iron composure, and he managed it, short of wind as he found himself: a grown man had to manage that rush of heat and anger, cool it to a faint, easy breeze, and keep his voice absolutely, absolutely steady and pleasant. That was what Cenedi had said.

“But, mani-ma,” he said, “When did you decide this?”

“Oh, over the last several days.” His great-grandmother touched his cheek. “We have enjoyed a most remarkable adventure together, have we not? Now it is extraordinarily important for the heir of the aishidi’tat to learn from his father, and understand the things his father and mother can teach him. I have business to care for, as you heard this very evening. So do you. Your business is to learn. Your father and your mother need a residence, as they have been most uncomfortably camped in inadequate quarters, and they have accepted our hospitality here. There is hardly room for your father’s affairs and mine under one roof, so we have accepted your great-uncle’s very kind invitation to visit in Tirnamardi, and you, Great-grandson, are to stay here and get acquainted with your father.”

Disaster. His father hardly paid attention to him, except naturally as his heir, and his mother had concern for him, but no great care, either. And both of them were more concerned with keeping him safe and contained and completely out of their way. He had no great resentment for their dealing with him: he entirely understood that they had abdicated his rearing to Great-grandmother, but she could not just walk off and leave him with Great-uncle’s guards. They wanted him to find man’chi for his father. Well, he did have. He was perfectly fine in that regard. His father was the authority. He was willing to say so. But nobody cared what he thought.

“Will nand’ Bren be here?” That was his last hope, his one appeal to his personal needs.

“Nand’ Bren will be moving to your great-uncle’s apartment. It is considered,” she said in that voice with which she made implacable pronouncements, “that you should have a period of dealing only with atevi, learning the things your sojourn on the ship could not teach you. You know you need that time. You know why, and you may immediately erase that frown, Great-grandson.”

“But—” he began.

“There is no ‘but,’ Great-grandson. People are watching you at every turn. Be seen to be your father’s son, as you ought to be. You will see us again, in good time. It will not be for that long. Surely one can trust your discretion.”

“One can trust. If I were on my own—” He leaped to the next foothold, the only possibility that offered relief. “I had my own place at Tirnamardi. Surely, mani-ma, I might have my own householdc”

He had mastered the anger, at least: and he would not let mani-ma embarrass him in front of Great-uncle and his own staff, who stood nearby, witnesses to the scene. She let a little well-guided astonishment lift a brow, now, that, in itself, enough to make him think, for one terrible moment, that she might still say something to make him out a fool. Great-grandmother’s wit was quick, and lethal.

“Your managed your own suite, yes, Great-grandson,” she replied to that doubtful argument. “For the few hours you were in it, and with Lord Bren’s staff coming and going. But that brings us back to the fact your father and mother have nowhere proper to live at the moment. Their apartment needs renovation, the Bu-javid’s undamaged suites are all occupied, and the primary purpose of our removing to Tirnamardi is to afford your parents suitable quarters.”

So he would pass under his father’s authority, and his mother’s, people who hardly knew him, who had last seen him when he was a baby. His composure wavered dangerously. He fought to recover it, knowing Great-grandmother was about to walk away and end all discussion. “But,” he said, the solitary word he could muster on the instant, and then sucked in a deep breath and made his best try.

“Mani-ma, may I just go to Tirnamardi with you and Great-uncle?”

“You have parents, Great-grandson, and all eyes are on your behavior. Persons will wish to know the source of influence on your behavior. I have had my time. Time now for your father and mother. And the demonstration needs to be public.”

“They hardly know me at all, mani-ma!”

“And you hardly know them, Great-grandson. Time to remedy that. Man’chi must settle where it should. Lord Bren must resume his duties. I must attend my own business. You, as your father’s son, have so many things to learn. See to it you do. Your father thinks quickly, and the aishidi’tat as it exists is his creation. You will do very well to learn what he thinks, and what your mother thinks.”

That was the problem. And Great-grandmother ran right past it.

“They by no means know what I think!”

“One is certain your thoughts will be of interest to your father once you prove yourself to have worthwhile actions.”

“Will you tell him so, mani-ma?”

“We have already told him so. Convincing him of that is your job, great-grandson. He has faults of his own: impatience and temper, infelicitous two. These should not become your faults, mind you. He has virtues: cleverness, a keen sense of opportunity, and courage, fortunate three. Profit by them. Avoid the one and imitate the other. They are both in your blood: deal with them.”

“One had far rather be in Tirnamardi! Or with Lord Bren.”

“Yes. Clearly. But that is not what you have. And one is hardly surprised at your reaction. You are afraid of your father. He makes you afraid.”

His chin lifted, betrayal of emotion. It was involuntary.

“Ah,” she said. “We offend you. You think nothing can frighten you.”

“No, mani-ma.” He scrambled to recover, and turned the argument completely end-first, as mani-ma had demonstrated, oh, very often. “You do not offend us.”

“Us. Us, is it?”

“We learn from you, mani-ma. But one must agree this is a very bad surprise.”

“Tell us that when you meet us next.” The cane rapped the floor.

“Infelicitous reversal. You have missed several points.”

His face went hot. “I have not!”

“Are you my great-grandson?”

“I certainly am, mani-ma.” Her subtleties hammered her opposition: few grown-ups wanted to trade words with mani-ma.

One had to add up the things she never said as well as those she had, and think fast, and still be respectful; and he knew what point he had failed to answer—the point he had not wanted to consider.

“And I will show my father.” He took a great risk, and left an infelicity, a proposition unresolved, just as mani-ma would do when she meant to provoke someone to ask, “What?”

The network of lines about Great-grandmother’s mouth, that map age had made, could be either hard or amused, and it was not, at the moment, amused. But he stood fast, and composed his face as well as he could, waiting for her to ask the mandated question. Or otherwise comment.

“Indeed,” Great-grandmother said, and the dreaded eyebrow lifted. “Pert, are we? Your father will certainly see our influence in that. We are not certain it will please him.”

“I am not certain I shall please him, mani-ma,” he said. “Perhaps then he will send me to Tirnamardi.”

“He certainly will not, since I will not permit it, and he certainly should not, with the whole Association watching and judging you. It would be no favor to you were he to do that, Great-grandson.”

“Perhaps I shall go live in space with Gene and Artur.”

Foolish provocation. He knew it the instant it slipped out.

“Do you imagine,” Great-grandmother asked him, “that that course would not require you to grow up? Do you imagine that the changes now proceeding in you would inexplicably cease, and you would be forever a little boy? I assure you, Gene and Artur are growing up. Are you?”

“One has already grown, great-Grandmother.”

“You have reached an infelicitous year,” Great-grandmother said sharply, “and yet show promise in it. Your arguments have improved, but do not yet convince us. Learn from your father, boy.

Then argue with us again.”

He was dismissed. He was left with no recourse but to bow, and watch mani walk away ahead of Cenedi, a straight, regal figure, walking with small taps of the dreaded cane, with great-uncle Tatiseigi at her side and both their bodyguards behind. His staff, his own and Great-uncle’s spies, had seen and heard everything: staff witnessed everything, and one was obliged to be dignified, even while losing badly and being embarrassed and treated like a child.

He remained upset. He was not fit at the moment to discuss matters. He walked down the short hall to his own suite and cast Great-uncle’s two guards a forbidding look as they attempted to go in.

“Wait here, nadiin,” he said, assigning them to stand at the door.

It was only Jegari and Antaro he admitted to his rooms; and pointedly he shut the door and glared at Pahien, who, across the hall, had started an advance on his door.

The Taibeni pair had gained a certain wisdom about his moods.

They went and turned down his bed, and quietly prepared his closet, choosing his wardrobe for the morning, doing all the things Pahien did, and said not a thing in the process.

He was not in a mood to sit down and talk with them and not in a mood to go to bed. He stalked to his desk and looked through his books, and looked at his unfinished sketch of the ship. That made him think about Gene and his associates up above, and made him think about being happy, which he was not, at the moment. Not at all.

He knew what he was. His parents were an Infelicity of Two and he was a Stability of One. He served the same function with his great-grandmother and his great-uncle, to keep them united in peace. He had served that function with Lord Bren and the kyo, and very many other people, and he had wished someone else would take that job—but he was clearly stuck with it. That was what Gene would say. Stuck with it. That expression meant very many different things in Gene’s language. One was stuck with something.

One stuck with a thing.

Mani would say everything fluxed and changed, and very few things stuck together, unless there was One to make them stand still. A Stability was a valuable thing to be. Everyone wanted a Stability. It was when it stuck to something else isolated and became an Infelicity of two that it began to be in trouble.

Baji-naji, mani would say: fortune and chance: flux. Everything shifted, or the numbers would hold the universe from moving, and the ship could never move through space and people who were wrong would never change their minds.

He detested numbers.

But he had to acknowledge he was probably stuck with Great-uncle’s two guards.

At least for a while.

And mani had come out of that meeting with her anger up, and that was why she had been so blunt and so unobliging.

He should have seen it. He had not. Fool, he had been, to talk to mani when she had just had to deal with rude people in the salon.

She had been on alert, and that had been an infelicitous moment to go on with that conversation. He should have asked to talk to her in the morning, but now she had closed the subject and taken a position.

He had to learn. He had to learn not to walk into such arguments, and to pick felicitous moments. That part he agreed with. He had seen enough fighting to give him bad dreams at night.

He had seen people die. He had probably killed someone, which he tried not to remember, but did. And he knew people here on the planet wanted to kill all of them, and that he was obliged to be smarter than most boys.

He was obliged to grow up faster than most boys.

And then people would see what he was.

A Stability could become an Aggressor, quite as well as a Support. He wished people really were afraid of disarranging him and disturbing his life. No one believed he was a threat– well, his father’s enemies might, but people in his household called him a Stabililty. He had rather be an Aggressor, at the moment.

But Bren-nandi said no. Bren-nandi had told him it was better for an aiji to prop things up than to knock them down. Murini was the sort who had knocked things down, and look what it had done, and how badly he had ruledc and everybody wanted him dead. Build.

That was Bren-nandi’s advice.

But he still wished he had his father’s power to break heads of those who had hurt his family. If he were aiji, if he was his father, he would be thinking about that. So was mani thinking about it, and he was well aware that was why everybody was too busy to talk to him as if he had any worthwhile ideas of his own. Mani was more Aggressor than Stability, and she was One, was she not?

But she had dinner with disagreeable people. She was polite. She found time for them, and smiled, even when it was a political smile.

And she had invited Lord Bren, when people there were not well-disposed to him. Why?

She was either a Stability or an Aggressor. Bren-nandi was always a Stability. One could feel the flux settle, when Lord Bren took hold of a situation.

That was a sort of power, too. That was a great and valuable power, was it not?

Nand’ Bren knew his timing to the finest degree. Nand’ Bren spoke, and even his father changed his mind.

So it was not just Aggressors who changed things, was it?

Something occurred to him as he fingered the sketch of the ship and thought about Lord Bren and great-grandmother.

On Bren’s advice, his father had agreed to have atevi go into space. It was his father who had had all the factories built which built modern machines. It was his father who had used television to reach the outlying villages and towns and kept the aishidi’tat informed. It was his father who had seen that if the humans failed to get their affairs in order and establish a stable authority up in the heavens, then disorder would spread in space—and that had led everybody to discovering the trouble at the far station, and rescuing Gene and everyone, and meeting the kyo, and learning about that danger in time to do something. And it was his father’s decision that they were building another starship, one that would belong to atevi, and maintaining an atevi authority on the space station, and using all manner of technologyc So his father might be an Aggressor—aijiin were that. But his father had wanted nand’ Bren’s influence and mani’s both to instruct him in his growing up. His father had gotten him and mani out of the reach of Assassins, seeing danger coming. His father was behind all sorts of change and technology which had brought on the trouble. So his father took chances.

And valued technology. And nand’ Bren.

So it was not like arguing with uncle Tatiseigi, who deplored everything new just because it was new.

So living with his father was not quite like being in Tirnamardi.

Mani had said there should be no televisions under her roof.

Where mani came from, in the East, things were very kabiu, and proper, and people were more interested in the traditions, like Uncle Tatiseigi.

But if Father were running the apartment, well, he could just possibly ask for a television, and maybe a computer, could he not—he could tell Father how he had learned to use the computers on the ship and he needed to keep his skills in practice, and he could tell Father how he needed books. There was the whole human Archive, over on the island, or at least up in space, on the ship, if he could get it. And that would bring movies. He ached to have movies again.

And there was a world of things on the ship that were just more convenient, that they could set up, like the kind of communications he knew Banichi and Jago and Cenedi and Bren himself had brought down in their luggage– Communications which had proved so much better than Uncle’s, and saved their lives, besides. His father would not disapprove of that. His father might be impressed if he knew his son could use computers as well as he could. His father would think it was a very good thing for his son to have learned.

Things could be different with his father in charge.

Not to mention Father might let him fly with Dur’s son in the yellow airplane.

Father was very close with Lord Bren, so he would be seeing Bren often, too. That was not so bad. If Bren was staying in Great-uncle’s apartment, that was just down the hall.

And if his father gave him computers and keys and permissions and the like, so might his mother, who might be easier to approach in some respects. Then getting places and getting information might be a great deal easier. His father would be the one to approve his going to the library, and “going to the library” could cover a lot of territory, besides that he would bet the library Jegari and Antaro had talked about had more than one door.

So it was not quite that he was about to be locked into an apartment with his father and kept like a prisoner. He was gaining access to someone who could get anything and do anything and get any book and any key in the world, if he could practice Bren’s kind of skill and just use his head.

That was one point in its favor.

Having those two Atageini bodyguards watching him and reporting to his mother and to great-uncle Tatiseigi—that was a problem.

But he could get past problems. He could depend on Jegari and Antaro for anything.

He drew a deep, deep breath, contemplating his sketch of the ship.

Now that he thought about what his father could do if he wanted to, this could work out. It could very well work out.

3

Breakfast, and Banichi was back—just after dawn, a towering and unexpected shadow in the dowager’s inner hall. He stopped, he gave a sketchy bow; Bren did, on his way to the dowager’s table.

And kept at bay the human desire to fling arms about his bodyguard, in sheer relief.

“One is extremely delighted to see you, Nichi-ji.” Ever so properly. “One is ever so greatly relieved.”

“One is extremely delighted to be back, nandi.” Banichi looked uncharacteristically tired, and was a little hoarse—one could imagine long talk, or loud talking, both unlikely in Banichi, but it had been an extraordinary week.

“Did Tano and Algini come back, too?”

“They are still at the Guild,” Banichi said, drawing that opaque curtain on all information within that organization, and telling him no more than that. It was worrisome. He wanted the rest of his staff back, with all his heart he wanted them, and considering Algini’s high rank in the Guild, he was by no means sure he would get them back. But he had Banichi safe and sound, and equally important, Jago had her partner back. Both facts made him feel ever so much happier in the start of a chaotic day.

“Do go rest,” he said. “The dowager’s staff is packing and moving for us, with help from down the hall. I don’t know if you may have heard.” It was almost impossible that Banichi had not picked up, from Jago, if no one else, that they were changing residences, but he delivered the information himself, for courtesy. “We are to remove to Lord Tatiseigi’s apartment this afternoon, but no one will disturb your sleep, on my explicit order, and one is certain the dowager will concur.”

“Indeed,” Banichi said, for once evincing the need. “I shall do that, Bren-ji. And I am thoroughly briefed. I will be awake by noon, when your security will gain advance access to the premises .”

“Go,” he said, and Banichi disappeared, with one more duty in front of him—getting them in there, and coordinating with Cenedi.

He knew Jago would refuse to leave him unattended for an instant, and with Tano and Algini still—engaged—at the Guild—it was all on Banichi.

He had seen nothing of Jago since they had waked, however, in these safe halls: she was closeted with the dowager’s security so far as he knew, doing everything alone, at least as the sole representative of his own staff in the transition. There were matters to be arranged with the place he was leaving as well as the place he was going: passwords to be changed, keys to be traded, God knew what else.

But Jago knew Banichi was back, and that it would not be all on her. Banichi would have advised her first of all, and he would be linked in by electronics at least the moment he passed the front door. So his personal world was knitting itself back together.

Banichi was coming down off that state of high alert that had occupied his staff ever since their return—or at least he was relaxing enough to admit he needed sleep. That was good to see.

And he very much preferred Banichi’s parting “Bren-ji” to “my lord.”

He felt easier in body and soul, despite the disarrangement of the impending move. He returned his attention to his unanswered correspondence, composing on the keyboard, where erasure did not mean throwing away a piece of tangible paper that could then fall into wrong hands—and where he had an automatic copy of his exact words. Even carbon paper was controversial modernity, in very conservative households, and worked exceedingly poorly with calligraphic pens, to boot– but at the moment he had no staff to turn it into proper handwritten text, and he could work very much faster on the computer. He answered the inquiries from Patinandi Aerospace, and also from the Ministry of Transport, assuring the latter that he had communication with the scattered flight crews—the truth: they were in the “answered” stack, and, being sensible people, would get their typescript quickly.

Most of all, he hoped Algini and Tano would show up soon, and his whole world would steady on its axis if he had some word from his errant but probably safe brother.

The dowager was in the process of leaving; he intended to go say a formal farewell, but wanted to stay out from underfoot otherwise.

Lord Tatiseigi had left his apartment at the crack of dawn, witness the fact that his own staff, namely Jago, was beginning to get contact down the hall in that other apartment. He had no idea how soon after the dowager’s departure Tabini would arrive here—or whether Cajeiri would come to wish him farewell as he left the premises. He dreaded that scenario. On the one hand it hardly seemed such an occasion, considering he would be only down the hall, but the change was far greater than that in the boy’s already unstable life, and he hovered between fear Cajeiri would pitch a fit and fear that he would only sink into quiet unhappiness.

Damn, he would miss the boy’s frequent company, probably more, he told himself, than the boy would end up missing him. He at least hoped that would be the case. In the welter of arriving stimuli, in the sudden plethora of atevi to deal with as the boy settled into court life, ideally young nerves would discover the stimuli that made them react properly—that was the theory behind the dowager’s decisions. The boy, educated in space among human children, would find more and more atevi associates, discover them much more to his own comfort, and become, in short, whatever a normal atevi boy ought to bec Which was not—the dowager was absolutely right—not– snuggled too close to the paidhi-aiji and passionately addicted to pizza and ancient movies from the human Archive.

He did interrupt his work to bid Ilisidi a brief farewell—she must have bidden farewell to Cajeiri already, since the boy did not appear. He asked Jago to order flowers sent to the dowager’s household staff, and more flowers to the staff of Tatiseigi’s establishment, and went in person to thank the cook in particular for his skill and courtesy in avoiding poisoning him; and he also thanked old Madiri, the major domo attached to the apartment itself, for his devotion. Madiri looked to be in the final stages of collapse; he had the aiji’s household about to move in, and had Cajeiri in his charge in the meanwhile. It was not an enviable position, and he accepted thanks in a distracted series of frenetic bows, then rushed off to investigate a crash in the hallway.

It seemed a good thing for the paidhi-aiji to disappear back into his office. He attended to his correspondence and did the requisite courtesies for the staff as people became available. And by noon, indeed, Jago turned up paired with Banichi, looking much less grim, and reported everything ready for his occupancy down the hall.

He signaled his departure to the staff. He rather expected Cajeiri to come out and bid him farewell when he stood at the door, at least, but there was no such appearance. He only repeated his courtesies to Madiri and thanked him for his assistance with baggage and the like, and walked out, a little worried for the boy, a little distressed, to tell the truth.

It was a short walk, the move down the hall; he personally carried nothing but his computer, Banichi and Jago nothing but two very large bags of what was not likely clothing.

And, except for the worry nagging him, it felt like the settling-on of a well-worn glove, walking through that familiar door and finding that, indeed, Madam Saidin and staff members he knew were lined up to welcome him.

“Nandi,” Saidin said—a willowy woman of some years, an Assassin whose working uniform was graceful brocade and whose principle defensive tools were her keen-eyed staff.

“Nadiin-ji,” he said, using the warmly intimate greeting on first arrival, for her, and for the staff. They bowed—mostly female, and impeccable in their attention to the floral arrangements in the foyer, the priceless vases on their fragile tables beautifully arranged, incorporating his flowers, his colors, as earlier they would have been all the Atageini lilies.

He felt immediately at home in this place—home in a sense that he had not been since his return from space, living on the dowager’s tolerance. He allowed himself to be conducted on a brief tour of the thoroughly familiar rooms, every detail evoking memory and very little changed from their state when he had last been in residence, unchanged, down to the precise placement of vases on pedestals, the display cases in the parlor, the little set of chairs—well, little on the atevi scale. There was a tea service beside flowers in the library, where he had loved to spend his idle time.

The immense master bedroom was ready for him, the bed with its historic hangings, its tall mattress piled high with comforters and pillows, and again, a vase of flowers. There was the luxurious bath, with its deep black-marble tub, fire-hose water pressure, and steam jets at one end—silver-fitted, of course.

He was toured about the well-stocked kitchens, introduced to the cook—a man who had worked with Bindanda, and who was doubtless very competent and knowledgeable about his requirements. Cuisine was one area in which Tatiseigi’s household excelled, and this man was very anxious to demonstrate the new containers of human-safe ingredients he had acquired precisely for him.

Never mind they were, to a man (or woman) Lord Tatiseigi’s staff and no few of them, likely down to the cook, were members of the Assassins’ Guild. That was more or less common among lordly establishments in the Bu-javid and round about, where assassinations were a threat. Never mind that he suspected Lord Tatiseigi had invited him to resume his residency in these historic and museum-like premises so that he could have better current information on him and on the aiji, who might presumably invite him and confide in him, than for any reason of personal regard. But that was very well. It was a place to be.

So here he stood. He had absolutely nothing to hide from Lord Tatiseigi, and knew that being spied upon by such a pillar of rectitude and tradition had a certain benefit: other eyes would see that he had nothing to hide, since he was willing to be minutely observed by the staff of this Padi Valley lord. So his residency had value to him and to Lord Tatiseigi alike, and indirectly, to Tabini and the aishidi’tat.

The tour concluded, praise and felicitations duly delivered. It was, finally, bliss to sit in an armchair he had once regarded as his, and sip a very delicate tea in a room little changed from simpler times—times when he had only had to worry about the political annoyance of certain regional forces, never seeing where that annoyance could lead. In these very rooms, he had contemplated the situations that had allowed Murini of the Kadigidi to survive, and finally to ally with the south—it would have been hard to see that unlikely alliance coming, still less to imagine its world-shaking effects, but he certainly wished he had done so.

Regrets, however, were only useful as instruction, not a dwelling place. He had to observe with a little greater suspicion, was all, and he had to go to Tabini with his suspicions: he had once held certain observations private, fearing the atevi answer would mean, literally, bloodshed. But at a certain point he had changed his view.

He saw Tabini’s opposition as likely to commit more bloodshed than Tabini, and moreover, against thoroughly undeserving people. That was the deciding point for him. But he remained doubtful that he ought to advise on such matters, where he lacked an internal sense of how the chemistry ran. He wished he had been a little less morally sure, back when there had been a chance—and knew how to be morally sure in the other direction that he was not losing touch with his own, admittedly alien, instincts.

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