Текст книги "Inheritor"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

“We do hope nothing is amiss.”

“One likewise hopes, nand’ Dasibi. Very sadly, one member of my household has received bad news from the ship.” Short guess who thatwas. “A death in his family. But he knew his choice to come down here to serve would separate him from his family as well as his people. Please limit public questions on this matter and assure inquirers that the ship-paidhi is a young man of great courage and resolve who shares my purpose in seeing the atevi ship built.”

“One will do so, nand’ paidhi. Please convey to him our good will.”

“With all appreciation, nadi.”

“There is—another message from lord Caratho. With maps.”

Lord Caratho saw no reason if Geigi was prospering why a space industry plant couldn’t be built in his district. That was the crux of the matter.

The problem was, neither did numerous other lords see why they shouldn’t have the same advantage. Caratho, and four others, had inundated the Economic Commission’s office with figures and proposals. But Caratho alone figured, since various regular channels had turned him down, to deluge the paidhi’s staff with maps and reports promoting such a plant.

Oh, damn, was the thought. Here it comes.

“If the paidhi will allow me to frame a reply,” Dasibi said, “I believe I can create a list of honored supporters of the space program which one might send to the aiji for his information, a list which others may wish to join and include among their honors—providing a disposition for all these reports and offers of resources to the effort. I have consulted the aiji’s staff and they concur. Meanwhile—lord Caratho has no need of such a plant, in the determination of the Economic Commission. He has ample revenues. He has fourteen hundred and fifty-four persons he’s had to write onto his staff because of unemployment in the district, which is not unusual for a lord of his wealth, and these are persons who used to be employed in railway construction, when the spur was being built. Let me apply finesse, if you will trust my discretion.”

Finesse was the same word Banichi would use—biichi’ji—in a strike without side damage.

“I have all confidence in you, Dasibi-ji. Please do what you can. I am notconcerned so much for lord Caratho, but by the persons unemployed. Find out the history on that, via the staff, if you can.”

“Taking a little liberty, nandi, I have, and they are persons who would not be employed by the plant he proposes.”

“Ah. He’s seeking to diminish his obligations.”

“One believes he is collectingthem into his employ, nand’ paidhi, particularly to present appearances and make those rolls larger. I am concerned, nand’ paidhi, that he may have done so with disregard of the welfare of the individuals he claims as dependents.”

“Do you, nandi, believe this is a situation to pass to the aiji’s staff?”

“I would say so, nand’ paidhi.” This last the old man offered with downcast eyes and some trepidation: he was accusing a lord in the reach of a person of rank sufficient to do him harm.

“I would concur,” Banichi said in a low voice, and the old man looked much happier. “And I know the rascal’s reputation: you will not surprise the aiji, nadi.”

“One is very glad to think so.” The old man let go a heavy breath. “And there are two messages from one Rejiri, the son of the lord of Dur, wishing your good will. We have no idea why he sent twice—he mentions a meeting. We are unaware of any meeting with him on your schedule, nand’ paidhi.”

“The pilot of the plane. And I accept his good will. Assure him so. I have no time for a meeting.”

“If not the front door, the back,” Banichi muttered. “He isyoung, nadi.”

“Should I not accept his good will?” he asked.

“Young,” Banichi said. “And a fool. But, yes. Accept it. Nand’ Dasibi advises you very well in everything.”

“And,” Dasibi said, clearly pleased, “a message from the aiji-dowager’s staff, saying there is no need for a response, but that she will conclude her winter season with a brief visit to the capital, and that she will see you, nand’ paidhi, at your convenience.”

“Delighted,” he said, and was, from the time he’d heard it from Tabini, whose protestations about the dowager as a force in politics were frequent, half in jest and half not.

Himself, he’d been very sorry to think of Ilisidi going back to Malguri and particularly of his having no chance at all to see her, perhaps for a very long time, once she settled into the estate she best loved and once she settled deep into the local politics. The most recent turmoil around Malguri had been the dropping of bombs and the launching of shells. They were provincial lords of the eastern end of the Western Association, lords neighboring Ilisidi’s mother’s home—lords whose tangled thesis was that the paidhi, the aiji in Shejidan, andthe human President were all involved in conspiracy to deprive atevi of their rights.

They were the same nuisances who had it that Tabini and everyone involved had known the ship was about to appear.

And some diehard theorists stillmaintained there was not only a spaceship secretly already built on the island of Mospheira, but that it was constantly coming and going—which wasn’t true, but nothing including showing the lords in question the output of the radar dishes that guarded the whole maritime coast would dissuade them from their belief in conspiracy against them. First, they weren’t capable of reading the data; second, they would declare it was being falsified by some technical system so elaborate it would have made building a spaceship all but superfluous; and third, they were determinedto believe it was conspiracy, and therefore it was conspiracy even if they had to invoke secret bases on the moon or mind-warping rays sent down from the station at night. The point was, they wanted to believe in conspiracy and their own political situation was a lot better and easier to maintain if there were one.

The fact that Ilisidi, whom these lords knew well and generally believed had the education to read the data, also had the brains to read the situation in Shejidan and the experience to read the truth in the paidhi had not persuaded the diehards. It had only persuaded Ilisidi, so she’d said to him, that the lords she led were not going to follow her further if she didn’t convince them by the force of her presence. Herpolitics revolved relatively simply on the wish to retain some areas of the world untouched by industry and some aspects of atevi culture untouched by human influence.

Oddly enough she’d found the paidhi an ally in that agenda.

So the woman, Tabini’s grandmother, who’d almost been aiji of Shejidan on several occasions, must, as she’d put it to him at their parting last fall, go pour water into the ocean: meaning she wouldn’t enjoy the work of politics in Malguri. But it was, she’d said, work which needed doing, and it aimed at mending attitudes and regional prejudices which had sadly cost lives and threatened livelihoods. It was work that she could do—uniquely, could do—though he had a great personal regret for seeing Ilisidi spend her efforts on provinces when they needed her as Tabini’s unadmitted right hand on a national level.

Evenif Tabini complained of her interference.

“Tell her—” he began, completely undaunted by the statement no reply was requested. Then he changed his mind a second time. “Pen and paper, nadi, please.”

He had one of his message cylinders in his pocket. He traveled with one. He sat down at a table and wrote, in his own hand,

I am delighted by the prospect you present and would gladly scandalize your neighbors, though I fear by now they have fled the paint and the hammering. Please find the occasion in your busy schedule of admirers to receive me or, at any time you will, please do not hesitate to call upon me.

That would remove any doubt of Ilisidi’s welcome to walk into the apartment at her will, and if uncle Tatiseigi was going to pay a call on him, damn, sheknew the man, and could judge better than he could what might constitute a rescue. She might even intervene: as Tabini had said, she and he did get along, and her presence at any formal viewing might be an asset. Hecouldn’t choose the guests for an Atageini soiree, but let Tatiseigi try to keep Ilisidi from doing as she pleased—as soon try to stop a river in its course.

He had his seal, too, and the office provided the wax. He put the finished message into nand’ Dasibi’s hands, spoke his usual few words to the staff.

“Nand’ paidhi,” Banichi said, attracting his attention. “The news services.”

He had, in some measure, rather deal with Uncle.

But the mere thoughtof Ilisidi had waked up his wits in sheer self-defense, and that was, considering where he was going, all to the good.

It was down the corridor then, and into that area near the great halls of the two houses of the legislature, the commons, which was the hasdrawad, and the house of lords, which was the tashrid. Last year, for the first time on atevi television, a human face had brought into atevi homes a presence which atevi children had once feared and now wrote letters to in the thousands. Last year he’d appeared on tape. This year his press conferences went live. A room across from the tashrid was set up as an interview center—that crowd of microphones and cameras was another accoutrement of notoriety, and of life close to the place where decisions were made. Lines snaked into the little room so that one had to walk very gingerly. The place bristled with microphones surrounding the seat he would take.

He allowed all the paraphernalia he had collected, the computer (which rarely left him) and the notes and the various small items with which he had become burdened in the clerical office, into the hands of junior security, and let Banichi see him to his place and stand near him.

He settled in, blinded by the lights. He waited, hands folded on the table that supported the microphones, until the signal.

“Nand’ paidhi,” the first reporter began, and wended through the convolute honors and courtesies before the question, a circuitous approach calculated, he sometimes thought, to let the paidhi fall asleep or start wit-wandering.

The question when it finally emerged from the forest of titles, was: “Having just returned from touring the plants and facilities supporting the space program, are you confident that atevi and human construction are of equal importance and on equal footing with the ship?”

“I am very confident,” was his automatic answer. It gave him a running start toward: “But not just that we are on an equal basis with Mospheira, nadiin: atevi are well-advanced toward the goal of space flight and may actually be in the lead in the race for space. It’s not a position in which one dares slacken one’s effort. We don’t know what delays may arise. But I am encouraged that we have made vast progress.” He was very glad to report nationally that the aiji’s monumental risk of capital was producing results: success bred stability—and complacency—he had to avoid that extreme, too. “I am very encouraged about the future of the program.”

“On what account, nand’ paidhi, if you would elucidate.”

“I am encouraged by the people, nadi. I have seen the actual elements of what will become the first spacecraft to be launched from this planet. They now exist. I have met atevi workers dedicated to their work, whose care will safeguard the economic prosperity of generations of atevi.”

“What do you say, nand’ paidhi,” this came from a southern service, “to the objections regarding the cost?”

Lord Saigimi’s platform. Notan innocent question. Provocative. It identified the source of trouble. He hoped not to have another question from that quarter, and could not gracefully look to the staff officer controlling who stood up to ask, not without exposing that glance on live national television.

“The rail system on which all commerce now moves was vastly expensive to build,” he said calmly. “Look at the jobs, nadiin, look at the industry. Were we to back away from this chance to lift the people of this planet into authority over their own future, someone else would exercise that authority. By the Treaty, I look out for the peace. And I seeno peace if such an imbalance develops in the relationship that now exists between atevi and humans. That would be more than expensive, nadiin, it would be unthinkable. The program mustgive atevi the power to direct their own lives.”

“Is this within the man’chi of the paidhiin?”

“Indisputably. Indisputably. By the Treaty, it is.” The question had come from the same source. The man did not sit down. And from all his worries about changes in atevi life, he was reminded now of Saigimi’s otherqualities. The same whose associates built shoddy office buildings and who personally tried to ruin lord Geigi in order to own his vote in some very critical measures.

“Did the paidhi feel at all that his safety was threatened in the peninsula?”

That was nota permitted question, by the ground rules that governed all news conferences. He knew that Tabini was going to hit the rafters over that one, and other reporters were disturbed, but he lifted a hand in token that he would answer the direct provocation.

“The paidhi,” he said calmly, and in meticulous Ragi, “has the greatest confidence in the good will expressed to him by honest people.” The news service this reporter represented, whether by one of Deana’s little legacies or a new inspiration of Tabini’s enemies, was attempting to politicize itself—implying (because a retaliatory strike by Guild members would have to follow a line of direct involvement) that the paidhi or lord Geigi had a connection to the assassination. He had no compunction whatsoever about derailing the effort in a rambling, time-using account. Two could play the games of a live, limited-time broadcast.

“Let me recount to you the scene as I left the plant, nadiin, as the goodheartedness of the workers brought a crowd out the doors, brought them carrying flowers toward the cars. When my plane dipped its wing and came about toward Shejidan I saw, beside the cars of my local escort, flowers of the springtime of the peninsula pass beneath us. So, so much generosity of the people, so much care of the vastly important task under their hands and so generous an expression of their belief in their task. Their hope for the future is visible now. Tangible.” They’d edit when bits of this replayed, and after what had been asked, he was careful to give them only positive, felicitously numbered statements. The paidhi did notintervene in atevi internal affairs. That was what they were trying to get him to do, so he played the uninvolved innocent. “I was greatly impressed, nadiin. I tell you, I was impressed so much that I believe as they believe, in the felicity of this project, in the felicity of this nation, in the felicity of the aiji who has been foresighted in making this reach toward space at a moment when all these fortunate things coincide.”

A second reporter rose. “Have you authorized, nand’ paidhi, the direct exchange of messages between the island and the ship-paidhi, in your absence?”

What in hell wasthis? A second out-of-line question?

“I have not forbidden it, nadi.”

“Can you, nand’ paidhi, confirm a death in the ship-paidhi’s house?”

There was a leak. There was a serious leak. It smelled of Deana. If he could figure how—and methods including radio did occur to him.

Damn it, he thought. He’d meant to report it, because with servants aware of something, informational accidents could happen, and he didn’t want speculation getting ahead of all the facts he had. But he’d meant to report it afterJase had talked to his mother. The death on the ship implied infelicity.

And he could either shut down the interview right now on these two rude and unauthorized questions on the very plain point that they violated protocol—he could signal his security to create a diversion; or he could handle the problem they’d posed and then loose security on the matter of who’d put them up to it.

“I can,” he said, “confirm, nadiin, that there is such a sad report; as best I am informed, an accident of some nature. I will try to obtain that information for you. But that is not officially announced, and the release of that information could cause great pain to Jase-paidhi, who has borne the effort and worked honestly to bring good fortune to atevi as well as humans. I’m certain that isn’t your intent.”

Sometimes his own callous response to situations appalled him. Atevi would wish to know. Number-counters would wish to know. All sorts of people would wish to know for good and sensible reasons, for superstitious reasons, and just because they were justifiably curious about human behavior.

The next two questions, which he took from the major news services, were routine and without devious intent. How was the space program meeting the engineers’ expectations and was the design translation without apparent error?

“We are developing a set of equivalences between the two languages which render translation of diagrams much easier. We’re dealing with a scale of measurements which has a scale of directly comparable numbers”—Atevi ears always pricked up at that word—“which renders the operation of translation much faster. Atevi engineers are actually able to read human documents where the matter involves written numbers, and to perform calculations which render these numbers into atevi numbers with all the ordinary checks that these skilled persons perform.”

Not of significance for a human audience, but for an atevi audience a real bombshell of religious and philosophical significance. If the universe was rational and numerical, numbers were a direct reflection of its mathematical dependability; numbers could predict, safeguard, direct, and govern. No project would succeed without good numbers; the ship on which the design was based hadflown, the human numbers were therefore good numbers, felicitous numbers, more to the point—since numbers could be felicitous or infelicitous, leading to success or disaster—and to have the news that atevi engineers could make clear sense of human engineering diagrams was the sort of thing that would actually fight with the peninsular assassination and the death on the ship for space on the news, at least briefly. He’d meant to drop that later, but it was capable of knocking Jase’s tragedy right out of the headlines, and that was, coldbloodedly, what he intended.

He answered four or five questions at the limits of his own mathematical ability, and took his leave of the reporters, with the (he said to himself) not unreasonable notion of the leisure to go back to his apartment and work through the translations he had to have ready before—the next duty he had on his agenda—he briefed the aiji’s aides, who had to go to the various departments to present the paidhi’s arguments before—step after that—the paidhi had to go before the off-session legislative aides to answer questions so that when, step three, the legislatures reconvened, they did it with good information before them.

But there was a far more immediate item on his agenda.

“We have a problem,” he said to Banichi as they walked toward the lift, and as the junior security held the curious at bay, out of ordinary hearing. “I don’t know how that information on Jase’s private business got to them, I don’t know whether there’s a leak somewhere, but my own thought was that either there’s a leak on the aiji’s staff—or ours—or that they’re broadcasting that on the news on Mospheira and somebody on the mainland follows enough of the language to pick it out.”

“Such persons who know Mosphei’ that fluently are all official,” Banichi said under his breath, informing him of something he’d wanted to know, and now did.

“There is,” Banichi added, “nand’ Deana.” One was respectful in a public venue, and accorded a name its honorifics, even when one proposed cutting the individual into fish-bait. “And I can tell you, Bren-ji, there has been illicit radio traffic.”

They’d reached the lift. He gave Banichi a sharp, alarmed look.

“How much else don’t I know?”

“Oh, much,” Banichi said. The door opened. “The names of my remote cousins, the—”

“Banichi, my salad, the truth.”

Banichi escorted him inside and delivered an advisement to hall security above that they were coming up. And Banichi grinned, not looking at him after the salad remark.

“The paidhi is still alive,” Banichi said, “and we keep him that way. But the details are his security’s concern.”

“Not where it regards Hanks!”

“Ah. Humans doproceed to feud.”

“With this woman? Damned right.” The door spat them out into the upper corridor, that with the porcelain bouquets. “Unfortunately the Guild has no offices on Mospheira.—And I need to know this, Banichi-ji.”

“It seemed at the time to involve only atevi, on this side of the strait,” Banichi said, “and Tano and Algini didn’t know. Had Jago and I been here, our rank would have obtained that information for you. Yes, there has been such traffic between Mospheira and the coast, in Ragi, definitively her voice.”

“Nand’ Deana.” Deana, who had had such widespread contact with all the wrong people, until someone had kidnapped her from Shejidan, someone whose identity both Ilisidi and lord Geigi had to this day declined to reveal, nor had he ventured to ask his own staff too closely. The embarrassments of the great houses were a volatile subject.

And when a rival paidhi was at issue, perhaps, he’d decided last of all, they were uncertain how he’d react and whether he’d be able to, in human shorthand, forgivethe atevi responsible.

“Where wasmy female colleague lodged when she was not in the Bu-javid?” he asked Banichi as they walked. “May we now ask officially, and for the record?”

“With lady Direiso.”

He was not utterly surprised. To say the least. “And Geigi simply walked in there?”

“Guns were involved, but not seriously. Direiso-daja had launched her greater hope without guns, simply in her acquisition of Hanks-paidhi.”

“ Shetook her away.”

“Without serious resistance.”

“One thought so. And getting Deana back—was there bloodshed?” That defined a level of seriousness in most quarrels. Not in this, he thought. “Did Direiso resist?”

“No bloodshed,” Banichi said. “Against fear of her own harm, she saw there was nothing left but graceful acquiescence to the aiji-dowager and the hope that Tabini would soon be a dead man. And that you would be. That would leave Deana Hanks as paidhi. And if Direiso’s wishes had proved to have stronger legs, it would have led to herin possession of the ship-paidhiin—which again would have made her powerful. Hence her easy capitulation on the day in question.”

Thatwas a plateful of information. Direiso had folded when Ilisidi, whom Direiso had regarded perhaps as rival andas ally, had walked in at gunpoint and demanded Hanks be turned over to her. Direiso had still hoped to reach the descending capsule and get her hands on Jase and Mercheson-paidhi.

But she hadn’t won that race. Theyhad.

So Direiso had lost Ilisidi’s support (realizing perhaps at the last that Ilisidi would have cheerfully put a dagger in her back, perhaps not even figuratively, rather than see her as aiji.) And now it was possible Direiso was courting the Atageini after an assault on Atageini pride last year, which had destroyed the lilies, perhaps by accident or perhaps not.

“Was not Direiso’s son withTatiseigi of the Atageini at that moment?” he asked Banichi. He recalled hearing that.

“That he was, Bren-ji.”

“You exceed my human imagination. Why?”

“If I knew that for certain, Bren-ji, Damiri might be lord of the Atageini at this hour.”

Serious news. Banichi suspected Tatiseigi of existing on the fringes of Direiso’s conspiracy, and the son’s presence there as not without Direiso’s approval. “You suspect Tatiseigi was withDireiso, at least in the attack against us in Jase’s landing?”

“We suspect everything.” They had reached the doors. “We act on what we know.”

“And she’s still plotting against the aiji. Hence the business in the peninsula.”

“True.”

“And its timing?”

“One can only guess, Bren-ji.”

He was talking to the entity both best and least informed on the matter, the one who’d most likely carried out the strike against Direiso’s ally Saigimi.

While heguested with lord Geigi, who’d seemed Direiso’s ally and then Tabini’s.

One needed a flow-chart. One truly did.

But probably the atevi thought that about humans.

There were things they had never admitted to one another. Radios belonging to the atevi government listening to transmissions. Jamming. On both sides of the strait. Phone lines that went down every time a stray cloud appeared. Banichi had said it once: an old man in a rowboat could invade the island. Or the mainland.

If Hanks had been transmitting to Direiso, there were atevi working for Tabini who would intercept those messages—and Deana and those behind her were just clever enough to plant what they wanted planted: poison, no matter the recipient, poison, whether in the hands of Tabini’s people or Direiso’s.

“Damn,” he said, envisioning listening posts up and down the coast, on which atevi could pick up whatever short-range transmissions the conservative faction on Mospheira wanted to send. It wasn’t just Direiso’s cause such hateful broadcasts might incite, if Deana and her supporters wanted to see bloodshed.

The fact that such conservative humans hated atevi was in no way skin off Direiso’s nose. The fact that Direiso hated her was no skin off Deana’s. Both the conservative atevi that wanted Tabini dead and human technology restricted—and the conservative humans whose varied agendas just wanted humans to stay technologically superior to atevi—shared the same agenda: restrict technology getting to Tabini. Tabini inpower and Bren Cameron inoffice meant a rapid flow of tech into atevi hands. So get rid of one or both.

The door opened. The servants received them. Junior security, having used the same lift on its return trip, overtook them before the doors shut and rearmed. He wasn’t acutely aware of his surroundings.

That Banichi told him what he did was indicative at least that he was being told truth on a high level. Atevi no longer kept the paidhi, who was acting in their interests, more ignorant than other humans, who were working against those interests.

That was useful. It was one step deeper into the situation he was already in.

It didn’t, however, stop Deana Hanks, whose agenda he didn’t believe he entirely guessed—and he couldn’t act upon his suspicions until he could hear exactly what she was saying and what she hoped to provoke.

And there’d been no atevi offer yet to provide him that information.

Damn, again.

11

The matter we were discussing,” Bren said to Banichi as they entered the apartment, as servants converged and he began to undo the buttons of his coat. “Can you prepare me a more extensive report on the problem, Banichi-ji? Andreport to the aiji regarding the reason for my question, regarding the interview? I want the text of what she’s been saying.”

“Yes,” Banichi said in that abrupt Ragi style, which was an enthusiastic yes, and went immediately to the security station, where, Bren said to himself, there was about to be a very intense, very serious session that might well extend feelers next door, and might end in a reporter finding himself in serious dialogue with the aiji’s security. Reporters on Mospheira questioned government agencies with a great deal of freedom and were lied to routinely. But on the atevi mainland, the concept of instant news was under current consideration by the government, the way the inclusion or non-inclusion of a highway system had gone under consideration by the government—and been rejected as socially destructive. Similar airy assumptions that what had worked for humans was good and right for atevi had started the War and killed tens of thousands of people.

In that consideration Bren didn’t like what had happened down in that interview. He saw interests at work that didn’t lead in productive directions for atevi—atevi interests that wanted Tabini dead and someone else installed as aiji.

But the implications of a person like Deana Hanks, a person trained to deal with atevi, working by radio purposely to destabilize the atevi government—that was against every law, every principle of the office. He was on shaky moral ground with the State Department because of the decisions he’d taken, but dammit, he was trying to keepthe stability of Tabini’s regime. His way was sanctioned by the people that had sent him here; and sent him backhere by means so desperate Shawn had secreted the new computer codes under the cast on his arm and hadn’t even told himhe was doing it.

He wanted a Mospheiran newspaper, dammit.

He wanted to know what was happening on the island in details on which the government couldn’tlie.

But in an atmosphere where people were afraid for their lives, as some clearly were on Mospheira, including his mother and his brother and his former fiancee, he wasn’t sure of getting the truth even if he got such a newspaper, or the unrestricted datafeed. So much for Mospheira’s supposedly free press.

The situation scared him, deep down scared him—for his family, for atevi, for everyone on the planet.

And he himself had argued with Tabini-aiji notto detain Deana Hanks on the mainland: to ship her home, safe and sound, mad, and dangerous. If things had gone that wrong, he had fault to bear. He could muster excuses when atevi politics were at fault. In this one, he could by no means blame the atevi government.

He smiled for the benefit of the servants who put away his coat, and he accepted their polite questions soberly: he didn’t lie to his staff, who had to handle touchy situations, and who had to fend away importunate and unauthorized persons of sometimes ill intent. “There was a difficulty at the interview, nadi,” he replied to the question of how it had gone. “A subject which should not have been brought up: nand’ Jase. We know the staff here didn’t release the information, but it is out.”