Текст книги "Inheritor"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

It damn sure wasn’t a Mospheiran city. You couldn’t forget that, either.

You stood under the same sky, you looked at the same stars, the same clouds, the same sea… but it wasn’t Mospheira where you were standing.

It wasn’t the ship, either. It certainly wasn’t the ship. He felt sorry for Jase. He really did. In the moments he most wanted to strangle Jase, and there had been some, he still knew what a strain Jase was under. And this last stress, the blow to his family, the safe home one left behind and imagined was always inviolate—was extreme.

God, he knew.

“No, no, and no!”

Thatwas Tabini in the hall outside.

“Light of my life, you will not, you will nothave your uncle in the apartment, it will not happen!”

“It’s ourancestral residence!” he heard: lady Damiri’s voice. “What can one do?”

“I knowit’s your ancestral residence! It’s Bren’s life, gods less fortunate! You knowyour uncle! He’s dealing with that damned Hagrani!”

It didn’t sound good. It didn’t sound at all good.

The door opened. Tabini walked in, the aiji of the aishidi’tat, the Western Association, the most powerful man on the planet—far overshadowing the President of Mospheira, who couldn’t rule his own staff, and who didn’t, additionally, command an Assassins’ Guild.

–For which, Bren often thought, thank God.

Damiri came in second, and the respective guards, third through sixth, as servants hurried to catch up. Bren bowed and maneuvered toward the appropriate chair by the window, as Tabini chose one of the pair facing the view.

Tabini and Damiri settled comfortably side by side, the image of felicity and domestic tranquility in a flurry of servants in red and guards in black.

“So,” Tabini said. “Good trip, nand’ paidhi? I received your preliminary report. Gods felicitous, you have stamina.”

“A productive trip, aiji-ma. I’ve left the small data with nand’ Eidi, if you will. As busy as this season may be, I would be happy to expand the account to details in writing—”

Tabini lifted his fingers. “I by no means doubt the accuracy of your general estimations. Damned nuisance that your trip home had to be so hasty. I trust it curtailed nothing of moment.”

“No, aiji-ma.” There was no indication the stray pilot rated the aiji’s notice, and he left the matter silent. “Everything of moment is in the files I’ve made available. And there’s nothing critical. I would claim your generous attention, aiji-ma, to honor certain promises I’ve made.”

A wave of the fingers. “Data for the experts and the sifters of numbers. News of yourself. News of nand’ Jase. What is this about an accident—about the death of Jase-paidhi’s father?”

Atevi had so many delicate words for death. Tabini chose the bluntest, least felicitous. And note that Tabini didknow. At what hour Tabini had known—the paidhi was perhaps wise not to ask.

“I’ve advised him to contact his mother for information,” Bren said, “and that he should by all means use official channels in such emergencies. Apparently the information came to him by Mercheson-paidhi, instead of directly from his mother or his captain, as would have been more appropriate to his relationship and his rank.”

“My spies report the fact of the phone contact between Mercheson and Jase.” Atevi had the devil’s own time with the combinations of consonants in Yolandaand preferred Mercheson, never quite making sense of the protocols of human names. “There was a set of messages from the earth station on Mospheira to the ship and the ship to Mospheira preceding and following the contact between Mercheson and Jase-paidhi.”

“Possibly,” Bren suggested softly, with the definite impression that, yes, Tabini had held this particular piece of distressing news from the paidhi until the paidhi was home to handle Jase, perhaps for fear the paidhi might breach security, alter his schedule, or call the ship himself. “Perhaps this communication between Mercheson and the authorities on the ship was because she realized she’d let out something, aiji-ma, or it might have a less felicitous interpretation. I would imagine, but not swear, that she was distressed to have broken the news and had no idea he didn’t know But beforeJase’s contact with Mercheson—clearly there was one prior call, but several—would be somewhat unusual.”

“The name Deana Hanks has floated to the surface of such messages in the last four days. Deana Hanks has advised. Deana Hanks has said…”

Damn, was the word that floated to the surface of his mind, but one didn’t curse in the aiji’s presence.

“One is far from pleased to hear so, aiji-ma, but I have no means to curtail her activities. I’ll certainly review the transcript of those contacts.”

“I have provided one. My informants say that Jase Graham has taken to his room in high and angry emotion. But that you estimate no danger in him.”

The informants were the entire staff over there, via lady Damiri, who said not a thing.

“He wishes to return to the ship,” Bren said, “—and he knows the way—the only way—lies through his performing his job. I do worry for him. But I believe he already shows signs of recovery from a very profound shock.” That was stretching it a bit. But one never wanted atevi to grow too quick-fingered about their defensive instincts. “Jase is not a dangerous man, aiji-ma. In terms of his knowledge, perhaps, but in terms of deliberate harm to the premises or to any individual, no, my human judgment says no.”

“On your judgment, Bren-paidhi. Do as you see fit regarding security, only so you protect yourself, the staff, the premises. You may have heard—” He slid a glance at Damiri. “There will be an inspection.”

“The lilies,” Damiri-daja said quietly.

“Lord Tatiseigi,” Tabini said, “will tour the restored breakfast room. And there will be cameras—official cameras. Do you think you can keep nadi Jase proper and kabiufor the duration? This is unavoidable timing. And highly unfortunate. But it might be an excuse, if Jase-paidhi were to take to mourning. Perhaps some human custom of retreat. Would it be appropriate for him to take ill?”

God, he wished he could say yes. He felt sick at his stomach, from sheer imagination of the Atageini lord visiting the apartment, ahead of television cameras. A formal reception. Jase, distracted as he was apt to be, in the mood he was bound to be in. He felt verysick at his stomach.

A broken-legged assassination? Dared he?

Maybe they could just slip Jase a sedative. A dose of mildly poisonous tea.

But no, no, then the press would blame the lord of the Atageini. The headlines would banner an assassination attempt.

Perhaps heshould take a double cup of the tea himself, and not have to face this lordly inspection tour.

But that would leave everything in Jase’s hands and thatwas impossible.

“I’ll decide,” he said to Tabini, “based on what I hear from him after he’s talked to his mother. But, in all honesty, aiji-ma, I fear I can’t offer a method. Unless we claimed some custom on the ship. Which—could answer to most anything, I suppose. If it were necessary.”

“I would have avoided this timing,” Tabini said. “But trying to delay it could make a worse problem.”

“One can’t tell my uncle no,” Damiri said, hands folded in her lap, very proper, very demure. “He wishes to see you, nand’ paidhi. And one believes this business on the peninsula has made him that much more aggressively determined.”

Bren drew a quiet breath, getting the full picture: Saigimi’s wife and daughter, relatives to Geigi, had fled to the Atageini’s neighbor, Direiso.

And Tabini entertaining lord Badissuni, the one Banichi said would be dead by fall.

“Not,” Damiri went on to say, “that my uncle will grieve for Saigimi. Nor that he will be displeased to see Direiso discomfited—but he will set great store on beinghere, nand’ paidhi, and in public, and—One relies on your discretion.”

Tabini shifted in his chair and propped his elbow on the arm, his forefinger across his lips as if, unrestrained, he would say something incredibly indiscreet.

The paidhi could well imagine. Tatiseigi would rather double-cross lady Direiso only aftershe’d knifed Tabini.

Failing that, was Tatiseigi’s move a public display calculated to annoy hell out of Direiso andto promote Tatiseigi’s importance in the aiji’s court—as uncle to the aiji’s now publicly revealed lover, and unwilling host to two humans?

Therewas the sticking point.

But meanwhile they’d be civilized. That was the essence of things: civilization. They were the lords of the Padi Valley: Tabini’s house, the Atageini, Direiso’s Kadigidi, and a handful else.

Tatiseigi of the Atageini and Direiso both had encouraged the peninsular lords to rash actions, which Saigimi had undertaken most rashly of all. Saigimi’s death was the means by which the aiji pulled the chain—hard—and reminded them all where authority and force rested.

Hell, it did beat war as a solution.

What he thought of saying was, It’s rather brave of Tatiseigi to walk in next door, considering he’s a logical target.

What he also thought was, God, what kind of Guild members is the old man going to have with him, and what if they break out guns, and shoot at Tabini?

What he did say was, “Would it be wise of me and nand’ Jase both to relocate permanently and allow your uncle possession of the apartment, Damiri-daja? Would that solve the problem? Or we might move for a few days—”

“No such thing!” Tabini said. “Let him be resourceful in his lodging!”

“I’d by no means wish—”

“No, nadi, let my uncle be resourceful,” Damiri said more quietly. “Nadi-ji, he will manage. With the aiji-dowager’s good grace, perhaps he will lodge directly downstairs: he is no stranger to her premises.”

“Is she here? I thought she was bound for Malguri.”

“Oh, grandmother isreturning here,” Tabini said. “She will arrive tomorrow. I’m sureshe stayed on in the western provinces for exactly this show—I mean the matter of the lily porcelains, not lord Saigimi and that nonsense. She’ll amuse herself with the party. Thenshe’ll be off to the east in all haste, mechieti and staff and all. So she promises me.” Tabini had settled back in the chair and folded his hands across his stomach, both elbows on the chair arms, feet out in front of him. “If you have wondered, nand’ paidhi, yes, regarding lord Saigimi. That is all I will say on the matter. And all you should reasonably ask. Grandmother will of course be furious with the affair in the peninsula and verybusy with phone calls all about the Padi Valley. But you have such a marvelous capacity to soothe her tempers, Bren-ji.—And I do trust you to do so.”

“Aiji-ma, I have no such influence, I assure you—”

“Oh, don’t be modest. She dotes on you. You’re civilized. That’s her word. Civilized. And you have, she says, such lovely hair.”

He tried not to flinch or to blush. Tabini was amused and Damiri’s mouth courted dimples one after the other. “So my security tells me,” he returned dryly, and was immediately aghast at himself. He’d twice now gotten direly reckless with atevi lords, but he drew a laugh from Tabini, who’d, in point of fact, challenged him.

In truth, the paidhi sat outside the system of lords and inheritance, and couldn’t possibly challenge Tabini in any sense that mattered.

“My uncle will not lodge with you, nand’ paidhi, be assured so.” That from Damiri-daja, and quite soberly. “Only be very careful. I ask you, be careful of him. He is in some ways delicate in constitution and more delicate in sensibilities.”

“He’s in all ways an unreasonable old man,” Tabini muttered. “It would be indecorous to file Intent on him, but, gods less felicitous! He does try me.—How, by the by, is the peninsular society this season? I hear you took advantage of lord Geigi’s hospitality.”

“He was a very good host and wishes you well, aiji-ma.”

“Well he should. Well, well, I’ll have your report of him. I trust you have it in preparation.”

“My staff does, yes, aiji-ma.”

“The plague of Uncle descends tomorrow—”

Tomorrow! he thought, and did not say.

“—barring rain,” Tabini said, “which I am told prevents the paint from drying completely enough. And the weather report is clear.—If you charm this impossible man, Bren, I do swear I’ll make you a ministerial department.”

“I doubt that I can do so much.” The relationship between the Atageini and the aiji’s house was already such that the aiji himself couldn’t stall the man or his questions, and probably many of those questions (except the peninsular assassination) involved two humans guesting on the property.

He’d enlist the staff to keep Jase and Tatiseigi separated. Saidin might do it. Saidin might have far more luck than the aiji of Shejidan, in that matter.

No one, it seemed, could tell uncle Tatiseigi no—and, technically speaking, he supposed no one could do so legally in the matter of the impending visit. What he had heard of the shouting in the hall indicated something truly beyond Tabini’s control, unless Tabini wished to take extreme action.

The old man was going to push that situation. And Tabini. Which was one thing considering interpersonalrelations. But this was two clans involved. And Damiri.

Wonderful place for two humans to be standing. And impeccable timing. Jase wasn’t up to this.

“One can still wish for rain,” Tabini said. “So. Bren.—What aboutGeigi?”

Now it came down to the matter on which the aiji wished to be informed—officially speaking. It came down to Geigi’s good reputation and the reputation of all the workers in that plant and in all the other labs and plants he’d visited, who relied on him to represent their work, their good will, and all the things they’d tried to demonstrate to him. He tried to collect his scattered wits and represent them well.

“So when will it fly?” Tabini asked him bluntly. Early on, it had been, Willit fly?

“Ahead of schedule, by some few months, aiji-ma, I still maintain so, until and unless we find some problem that delays us the months we allowed for such events.”

“But as yet no such problem exists.” Tabini rested his chin again on his hand and looked satisfied. “It might have arisen, understand. Now such an interruption is far less likely.”

He was so busy thinking of engineering details he didn’t take Tabini’s meaning immediately.

Then he did.

“Saigimi did not want that ship to fly,” Tabini said. “He viewed it as a means to bring down the government. He was wrong. His assassins did not reach Geigi and they did not reach the director of Patinandi Aerospace. So you had a very quiet trip.”

“Yes, aiji-ma.”

“You noticed nothing untoward.”

“No, aiji-ma.”

“Good,” Tabini said. “As it should have been.”

10

The interview with Tabini had gone relatively quickly, and on a day interrupted by phone calls and upsetting news of the Atageini visit—to hisapartment—Bren was hardly surprised.

That left him time to go back to the apartment before the television interview, or, on the other hand, time to visit the office down in the legislative wing and to pay a courtesy call on his staff.

He might, he decided, accidentally interrupt Jase’s phone call if he went back to the apartment: Jase had to make his call either from the library or from the security station, and the library venue had been so hard to predict regarding noise from the reconstruction (hammering would begin at the damnedest times, and the staff would go running, trying to silence the culprits) that he rather imagined Jase would use the security office phone near the front hall out of force of habit.

Which didn’t need the confusion of the front door opening and closing and the servant staff running about.

So he opted for the office downstairs, where his clerical staff maintained a dike against the flood of correspondence. It was a rare honor, the dedication of one of the three available offices inside the Bu-javid, ‘for security reasons,’ as he’d heard, meaning that he tended to visit the clerical office often and that his security and Tabini’s didn’t want the paidhi going to the building that was the other option, down the hill to what was officially called the Maganuri Annex Building. It had been built in haste among the hotels at the foot of the historic real estate, and it probably forecast the trend: the governmental complex was starting to sprawl, and the last rank of intruders, the hotels, were, only since last year, starting to crowd the residential areas, which the Planning Commission wouldn’t have.

So there was to be a new subway link to a hotel district being built on the city outskirts. Tabini’s enemies pointed to the growth of government.

But those same enemies supported the creation of various commissions and agencies that kept the aiji from making autocratic decisions, which was the alternative. And they required more offices and more hotels. He’d warned Tabini against more committees. Tabini had been willing to let the power go last year, saying that certain things needed more study than his staff could give it.

But now Tabini was looking with a very suspicious eye at some of the commercial interests that had crept in with agendas which had no place in the traditional structure, agendas being backed by some of the lords. That office building out there, the Maganuri Building, built to house the study committees proposed by the legislators opposed to the growth of government, was beginning to be plagued by sewer and electrical problems. The opposition blamed sabotage by Tabini’s agents, or by the old aristocracy, a widerange of conspiracy indeed, and no few of the commons avoided it and wouldn’t attend committee meetings there because of the reputed bad numbers.

Others said it was built on a battlefield (it was) and that the dead troubled it. Oddly enough, the surrounding hotels and businesses had never had such difficulties.

So the paidhi was quite glad to be honored by the office he had, and not to have to take the subway down the hill, or to the edge of town—where according to the latest rumors, the construction, since the folded space controversy had set certain numerologists playing with an expanded deck, was also plagued by bad numbers, which might even halt construction.

Certain numerologists were suggesting that the number of state offices be shrunk, and the whole thing be cast back to the system whence it had blossomed, tossing the responsibility for information-gathering back into the hands of lords and representatives, who, in the old days, might suffer personal disgrace if they handed in bad information. The names of lords authoring reports previously had been permanently attached to the measures they proposed and the results, good or bad, had remained theirresponsibility.

Some said the fact that Maganuri had died and that the three local lords (who had been very forward to hire construction agencies within their associations) failed to affix their names to the building ought to be a warning.

Some said that old Maganuri himself haunted the office building on stormy nights, looking for Shimaji, Sonsini, and Burati, the contractors in question, to put them to haunting the building in his place.

So the paidhi was definitely glad not to be down there, in a building some were seriously talking about demolishing before it was fully occupied. As it was, he needed only go to the lower tiers of the Bu-javid complex and, via the security access, walk into his premises, never having broken a sweat.

Secretaries scrambled out of their chairs, rose and bowed as he and Banichi walked in, and nand’ Dasibi, the chief of his clerical staff, came hurrying from his office to bow and receive the paidhi’s personal inquiry into office affairs.

While he was listening to Dasibi’s running commentary, Dasibi walking beside him with his notebook the while, the paidhi took his usual tour down the aisles of the clerical desks, pausing here and there for a word to the clericals who answered his mail, the first line of defense between the paidhi and his more interesting correspondence.

He routinely scanned that, too, or at least the prize pieces. Nand’ Dasibi had established a board on the south wall in which the staff delighted. It recorded, Bren had discovered, the tally of death threats versus marriage proposals, choice crank letters, some proposing how to protect the earth’s atmosphere against pollution from passing spacecraft and one, his favorite, from a husband and wife in the East, regarding the invention of a ray that would convert the ether of space into breathable atmosphere so that airplanes could fly to the station.

The paidhi through his staff had suggested that the proposed spacecraft did have wings for atmospheric operation, so that, if the gentleman and his wife could perfect the conversion ray, it would be perfectly compatible with the current design.

So far there was no news from that province of such a development.

And there was the board devoted to children’s letters: the staff tallied those, too, mostly sweet, occasionally clever, sometimes fearful of half-heard adult conversations. The staff passed on to him the best of the children’s letters and the letters which seemed to represent a trend, and occasionally gave him copies of the really good crank letters and marriage proposals. His security handled the death threats.

But mostly these clericals dealt with the flood of general correspondence, which would have inundated him and taken all his time. They also transcribed his tapes and cleaned up his rough and informal notes into the language most appropriate for the occasion. That small service alone saved him an immense amount of dictionary-searching—not that he didn’t know the words, but he was never sure there wasn’t a better one and never, on an important report, dared trust that the word that popped into his head didn’t have infelicitous connotations that he had no wish to set onto paper. A written mistake might fall into the hands of news services interested in catching the paidhi in such an infelicity. The press daren’t take on the aiji, mustn’t, in fact; but a lord of the Association was a fair target; and in less than a year he’d become such a person—protected, still, in certain ways, but increasingly fair game if he made a blunder that saw print.

Besides, his dictionary was one humans had compiled, of necessity, to equate human words—and sometimes one could make an unthinking glitch on the numbers because counting didn’tcome naturally and even atevi made mistakes. These experienced governmental clericals would, like his experienced governmental security, fling their knowledge between the paidhi and the dedicated number-counters who sometimes sent letters specifically designed to entrap the paidhi into numerically infelicitous statements, which they, in the perverse self-importance of such experts, could then term significant.

As a minor court official, again, he’d been immune from such public relations assassinations. As a major player in affairs of state, he, like the aiji, wasa target of such manipulators, and his strike in return was a standing order for commendations to any clerical who by handwriting, postal mark, or other clues, identified one of these nuisances by name, handwriting, and residence and posted them to others in the pool. The staff shared information with the aiji’s staff and, in a considerable network, with various lords’ staffs: ’counters could be a plague and a pest, and the clericals detested and hunted them as zealously as the Guild hunted armed lunatics.

It made him feel a certain disconnection from the job he’d used to do himself, however, and he feared that he was in danger of losing touch with ordinary atevi as fast as his increased notoriety and importance had gained him the ability to know them. He likedthe atevi he’d met, the elderly couple at Malguri, his former servants in the Bu-javid, the astronomy students at Saigiadi—most of all, people of various staffs he’d dealt with.

And he couldn’t stay in touch with them, and couldn’t allow himself the human softness, either, to reserve a spot for them in that inner limbo where lost and strayed acquaintances dwelled. They were outside his man’chi. They weren’t his. He couldn’t expect them to become his.

And in that one simple example he saw why humans could become so disruptive of atevi society in so short a time, just by existing, and dragging into their likingpersons who really, never, ever should be associatedwith them in the atevi sense.

Humans had created havoc without knowing the social destruction they were wreaking on the foundations of society where people could be badly bent out of their comfortable associations, in that region where man’chi could become totally complex.

In some wisdom the aiji had set himup in the rarified air where man’chi could flow safely upto him—but sometimes he looked with great trepidation at the day when, their mutual goal, atevi might be working side by side with humans on the space station they were diverting the economy of a nation to reach.

In such moments he asked himself what potentially disastrous and crazy idea he’d given his life to serve.

He deliberately didn’t think too deeply into the changes in his personal status he’d encouraged or accepted—or a part of his brain was working on it, but it wasn’t a part that worked well if someone turned on the lights in that dark closet.

Stupid choice, Bren, he sometimes said to himself, when he realized how high he’d climbed and how he’d set himself up as a target. Deadly stupid, Bren Cameron, he’d say, on cold and lonely nights—or standing as he was in the middle of the atevi clerical establishment that, with great dedication to him, for emotional reasons he couldn’t reciprocate, continually and routinely saved him from making a fool of himself.

He could afford at least the question of what in hell was he doing and what did it all mean and where was he leading these people who approached him with the kind of devotion they ordinarily spent on the aiji, who wasworth their devotion.

How did he dare? he asked himself; and Chance and George Barrulin, the answer echoed out of the haunted basement of his suspicions, one of whom, Chance, was the demon in the design of the atevi universe and the other of whom, the President’s chief advisor, was the devil in the design of Mospheiran politics.

Neither of them was fit to be in charge of as many lives as they controlled.

But Tabini, he strongly believed, wasfit: fit by biological processes he couldn’t feel and political processes purely atevi.

To his continual wonderment, Tabini accepted what the paidhi did, double-questioned him on his choices, and threw his authority behind the concept of atevi rights in space, when human authority said atevi might be destroyed by the concept of microchips and nuclear energy.

What atevi did after they were up there in space, that was another matter.

He asked himself, on lonely nights, whether he’d live, himself, to see that ship fly. He could envision himself standing at the side of the runway. But in his imagination he never could see the ship. He’d become superstitious about that image in his mind, even gloomy and desperate, and he wasn’t ready to dig too deeply and learn what exactly his subconscious thought he was doing. He didn’t have a choice; he didn’t currently have a better idea, and what he was doing had to be done before the next stage of worrying.

He came down here when he was scared. As the interview had him scared. He faced that fact now. He’d had it easy in the provinces, on tour. He’d been traveling in the aiji’s plane, under the aiji’s guard, and everybody was glad to see him because he might bring trade and funds.

Here, in the Bu-javid, the predators gathered, and snarled and swarmed after scraps in ways that reminded him very uncomfortably of the situation back home.

He’d discussed it with Tabini.

Now a man was dead, who’d been part of the drive to take the power back to the provinces. It wasn’t just that Saigimi was a disagreeable man with bad numbers: it was that Saigimi was a peninsular lord who’d represented a policy and a movement that didn’t like the influence of the paidhi—that didn’t like the paidhi’s acquisition of this office, this prominence, this kind of loyalty. Or Tabini’s appetite for technology and power.

It was remotely possible that Saigimi had had a point. A rotten way of expressing it, but a point.

And that was one of those items that was going to be seething under the surface of the questions various news services wanted to ask him. The conference was supposed to be about the space program, which he desperately wanted to talk about. But atevi knew there was something very significant going on in the way the space program was being built, and in the way prosperity was being handed out to one lord and assassination used against another.

The answers whether it was a good or bad change in atevi affairs were in those baskets of letters—ordinary atevi expressing their opinions.

“There are a few items difficult of disposition, nand’ paidhi,” Nand’ Dasibi informed him. “One understands there was an untoward incident in the skies on your return. Might one inquire, will the paidhi wish this incident acknowledged if the public inquires?”

“The matter,” Banichi said, his shadow as he had walked through the room, among the desks, and now as they stopped at the head of it, “is still under staff investigation. It was minor.”

“Say,” Bren added, “that I was not hurt and never alarmed. The skill of the aiji’s pilots prevented harm. It underscores the importance of pilots observing air traffic control regulations and filing flight plans… and so forth. You know my opinions on that.”

“One does, yes, nand’ paidhi.”

“There will also be an announcement shortly of a tour of the residence by lord Tatiseigi.”

Brows went up. Dasibi said not a thing.

“I’m sure,” Bren said quietly, “that there’ll be inquiries, and the event will not be open to the public. Don’t comment on the situation in the peninsula unless it’s cleared through the aiji’s staff. The official answer and the real one is that I had a successful tour, enjoyed fine hospitality, and was never threatened by the events to the south. I will forewarn you however that one should not schedule very many staff leaves of absence during the next week or so.”