Текст книги "Inheritor"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

Yet.

They were, assuredly, going to enjoy a certain importance once the earth-to-orbit craft was flying; and once the coming and going became frequent; but more than that—more than that, he began to think, the computer programs the pilots right now disdained were ultimately going to be run by atevi computer programs, using atevi grasp of mathematics.

And in that respect he could see where it was going to go over a horizon he couldn’t see past, into mathematical constructs where a lot of atevi couldn’t follow, arcane mysteries that might totallyconfound a set of philosophies built on mathematical systems. And responsible handling of thatmight be far more important to atevi than any reason these men and women yet saw.

Aiji-ma, he wrote somberly, these pilots will in years to come work closely with the Mathematicians’ Guild and with the Astronomers in whatever capacity the Astronomers enjoy at that time. I believe in due consideration that there will be reasons to facilitate exchange of information at Guild level. I know that I, being human, only imperfectly comprehend the advantages and disadvantages of a change from professional Association to Guild, but there may be special circumstances which will place these persons in possession of sensitive information which I think your greater wisdom and atevi sensibilities alone can decide.

Let me add, however, that the term Guild as atevi apply it is not the human model; and this should be considered: it came to be among the most divisive issues of the human-against-human quarrel that sent humans down to the planet.

There was a human named Taylor once, when the ship was lost in deepest space and far from any planet. Taylor’s crew gave their lives to fuel the ship and get it to a safer harbor. The sons and daughters of the heroes, as I was taught was the case, gained privilege above all other humans, used their privilege and special knowledge ruthlessly, and attempted to hold other humans to the service of their ship, a matter of very bitter division.

He stopped writing—appalled at the drift of what he was admitting to atevi eyes, to an ateva who was working to his own people’s advantage far above any theoretical interest he held in humans—an ateva whose feelingsabout the matter he couldn’t begin to judge, no more than he could expect Tabini or even himself accurately to judge the feelings of humans dead two hundred and more years ago.

He was appalled at how far he’d forgotten the most basic rules in dealing with atevi. He security-deleted what he’d just written, wiped every possible copy, and then grew so insecure about his fate and that of the computer he wasn’t sure humans had told him the truth about a security-delete.

The room after that was quiet. There was the dark outside the windows. There was the hush in a household trying not to disturb those doing work they generally couldn’t discuss. There was the burden of knowing—and not being able to talk about things.

Never being able to talk. Or relax. Or go out of that mode of thought that continually analyzed, looked for source, looked for effect.

Looked for ulterior motive.

And he was on the verge of making stupid, stupid mistakes.

He needed a human voice, that was what. He badly needed to touch something familiar. He needed to seesomething familiar—just to know—that things he remembered were still there.

He folded up the computer, got up, walked back to the office, quietly so. Jase was still in the library, reading, but Jase didn’t look up as he shut the office door.

And dammit, no, Jase wasn’t the prop to lean on. A human born lightyears from the planet wasn’t it. A man under Jase’s level of stress wasn’t it. He didn’t need to dump all his concerns on anybody.

He just needed—he needed just to hear the voices, that was all. Just needed, occasionally, to hear the accents he knew, and the particular human voices he’d grown up with, and even—he could be quite brutally honest about it—to get mad enough at his family to want to hang up, if that was what it took to armor him for another three months of his job. He loved them. He was technically allowed to say the fatal word lovein their instance, angry and desperate as they could make him.

Maybe, he thought, thatwas the part of his soul that needed exercising. Maybe it was hearing Jase talking to his mother. Maybe it was the self-chastisement that maybe he ought to make peace with his own family, and not carry on the war they’d been fighting.

Maybe it was the definite knowledge that his mother had justification for complaints against her son. It came to him with peculiar force that he’d been blaming her for her frustration when it was the same frustration and anger the whole island of Mospheira was likely feeling with him, and showing to his mother by harassing her sleep. Hecouldn’t explain his position to her, hell, he couldn’t explain it to himself on bad days, and now she had health problems the stresses of hisjob weren’t helping at all.

Not mentioning the mess he’d put his brother and his family in.

At least he could call. At least he could make the gesture and try to plead again that he couldn’tcome back and turn over the job to Deana Hanks, which was his alternative.

Jase didn’t look up. The hall was shadowed: possibly Jase didn’t notice him at all. Or thought he was being checked on by security or one of the servants—or by him—and purposefully didn’t notice.

He went to the little personal office instead, picked up the phone and, through the Bu-javid operator, put through a call into the Mospheiran phone network, which got a special operator on the other side. Checking the time, he put through a call to his brother Toby’s house.

“ This number is no longer a valid number. Please contact the operator.”

“ I’m sorry,” the Mospheiran operator said coldly, cutting in. “ There’s a recording.”

I know there’s a damn recording! was what he wanted to say. Instead, he said, reasonably, “Call Bretano City Hospital. My mother’s a patient there.”

There wasn’t even a courtesy Yes, Mr. Cameron. The operator put the call through, got the desk, a clerk, the supervisor:

“ We have no Ms. Cameron listed as a patient.”

“ They say,” the operator said, “ they have no Ms. Cameron listed.”

He didn’twant to call the Foreign Office. He had a short list of permitted persons he couldcall as paidhi without going throughthe Foreign Office or higher. And he was down to the last ones. His mother’s home phone didn’t work during the evening hours: the phone company had blocked incoming service because of phone threats. Toby mightbe there. His mother might be. Possibly she’d come home from the hospital and Toby might have taken his entire family there because he didn’t dare leave the kids or his wife alone back at their house. Damnthe crawling cowards that made it necessary!

“All right. Get me Barbara Letterman,” he said to the operator. “She’s married to Paul Saarinson.”

“ I don’t have authorization for a Paul Saarinson’s residence.”

“You have—” He made a conscious effort to keep his language free of epithets. “—authorization for Letterman. She is the same Barb Letterman. She has a State Department clearance to talk to me. She hasn’t changed her clearance. She just got married.”

“ I can only go by the list, sir. You’ll have to contact the State Department. I can put you through to that number.”

The operator knewthat number wouldn’t find anybody able to authorize anybody at that hour. He could try Shawn Tyers at home. But he didn’t want to compromise Shawn, and he had sure knowledge that his calls were monitored at several points: in this apartment, with Tabini’s security, with Mospheiran National Security and God knew, it was possible there were leaks with this particular operator. George’sfriends were gaining increasing access through appointments to various offices, just a quiet erosion of people he usedto be able to reach.

And it did no good, no good at all to lose his temper. He wasn’t out of names, if thatold list was the one she was going by. There was one woman, one woman he’d dated in time past and who had gone on the list, before he and Barb had almost gotten to talking about a future together. Sandra Johnson was a date, for God’s sake, not a resource for a Foreign Office field officer in trouble. But she was a contact—to prove he could get someone.

“Sandra Johnson.”

“ Yes, sir.”

He shut his eyes and blocked out the atevi world. Imagined a pretty woman in an ivory satin jacket, candlelight, Rococo’s, and a quiet chat in her apartment. Nice place. Plants everywhere. She named them. Clarence, and Louise. Clarence was a spider plant, one of those smuggled bits that the colonists weren’t supposed to have taken, and some had, and spider plants were common, but no ecological threat. Louise was a djossivine, and he’d said—he’d said she should set it on her balcony. They liked more light. The paidhi knew. They grew all over Shejidan.

The phone was ringing. And ringing.

Please, God, let someone pick it up.

“ Hello?”

“Sandra? This is Bren. Don’t hang up.”

“ Bren Cameron?” Justifiably she sounded a little shocked. “ Are you on the island?”

“No. No, I’m calling from Shejidan. I apologize. Sandra. I—” Words were his stock in trade and he couldn’t manage his tongue or his wits, or even think of the social, right words he wanted in Mosphei’. It was all engineering and diplomatese. “I’ve run out of resources, Sandra. I need your help. Pleasedon’t hang up. Listen to me.”

“ Is something wrong?”

God. Is something wrong? He suffered an impulse to laugh hysterically. And didn’t. “I’m fine. But—” What did he say? They’re harassing my family and threatening their lives? He’d just put Sandra Johnson on the list, just by calling her. “Sandra, how are you?”

“ Fine. But—”

“But?”

“ I just—was rather surprised, that’s all.”

“Sandra, my mother’s in the hospital or she’s home. I can’t get the hospital to admit she’s in there. Probably it’s a security precaution, but the clerk’s being an ass. I know—” God, he had no shame. Nor scruples. “I know I have no right to call up like this and hand you a problem, but I can’t get through and I’m worried about her. Can you do some investigating?”

“ Bren—I—”

“Go on.”

“ I know she’s there. I know they’ve got police guards. It’s in the news. Bren, a lot of people are mad at you.”

“I imagine they are. But what in hell’s it doing in the news about my mother and police guards?”

“ Bren, they’ve thrown paint on the apartment building. Somebody shot out the big windows in the front of the State Department last week. You’re why.”

He felt a leaden lump in his stomach, “I don’t get all the news.”

“ Bren, just– a lot’s changed. A lot’s changed.”

The operator, he was sure, was still listening. The call was being recorded.

“Shouldn’t have bothered you.”

“ Bren, I’m a little scared. What are you doing over there? What have you done?”

“My job,” he said, and all defenses cut in.

“ They say you’re turning over everything to the atevi.”

“Who says? Who says, Sandra?”

“ Just– on the news, they say it. People call the television station. They say it.”

“Has the President said anything?”

“ Not that I know.”

“Well, then, not everything’s changed,” he said bitterly. Eight days out of the information flow, maybe. But by what Banichi had said about things not getting to Tano’s level, with Banichi gone for six months, God alone knew what hadn’t gotten to him.

And common sense now and maybe instincts waked among security-conscious atevi told him he’d both made a grave mistake in getting on the phone and that he’d learned nothing in this phone call that he could do a damn thing about. “So now that I’ve called you, youcould be in danger. How’s your building security?”

“ I don’t know if we have any.” It was half-laughing. Half-scared. Life on Mospheira didn’t take crime into account. There wasn’t much. There weren’t threats. Or had never been, until the paidhi became a public enemy. “ What do I do?”

“Get a pen. I’m going to give you instructions, Sandra.”

“ For what? What’s going on?”

“Because they’re threatening my family, they’re threatening my brother and his wife and kids, and Barb got married to get an address they couldn’t access. I shouldn’t have called your number.”

“ You’re serious. This isn’t a joke you’re making.”

“Sandra, I was never more serious. Have you got a pen?”

“ Yes.”

“I want you to go to Shawn Tyers. You know who he is. His apartment is 36 Asbury Street.”

“ The Foreign Secretary.”

“Yes.” The line popped. His heart beat hard. He knew he was about to lose the connection and that it was not an accident. The window he had was closing, the operator had found someone of rank enough to terminate the phone call because they’d gotten into things they didn’t want flowing across the strait, and he’d just put Sandra in real danger. “Leave Clarence and Louise on their own, go to a neighbor and get them to take you directly to Shawn. Wait in his lobby all night if you have to. Don’t let them arrest you.” This was a woman almost entirely without experience in subterfuge. And if they were monitoring, the people who would harm her were listening to what he was telling her to do. “This instant. I’m serious. You’re in danger, now. They’re listening on the line, Sandra. These people could send the taxi if you call one. Get help from people you know or don’t know, but not taxis and not government. Get to Shawn. Now! Move fast! Don’t go on the street alone—and don’t trust the police!”

“ Oh, my God, Bren. What’s going on? What are you involved in? Why did you call me?”

It’s not me, he started to say.

But the line went dead.

He stood leaning against the desk. He was gripping the phone so hard his hand was numb. He hung up the receiver knowing he commanded any security help he wanted on this side of the strait—and couldn’t get through to his own mother on the other.

Deana Hanks was broadcasting messages to incite sedition on the mainland. That no one stopped her meant no one knew or that no one could get an order to stop her.

That no one in the atevi government including Tabini had told him about Deana meant that, Banichi’s protestations aside, either no one had told Banichi or Banichi was covering something—Banichi ordinarily wouldn’t lie to him, but there were circumstances in which Banichi wouldlie to him. Definitely.

He’d thrown in the bit about the damn houseplants to cue Sandra he was speaking on his own and now he didn’t know but what she didn’t take it as some joke.

The stakes had gotten higher, and higher.

And higher.

Maybe he was just so out of touch he was a paranoid fool. But what he could feel through the curtain of security that lay between Mospheira and the Western Association scared him, it truly scared him.

He straightened, met the grave face of an atevi servant who’d, probably passing in the hall, seen him in the office and seen his attitude and paused. Or his own security had sent her. God knew.

“Do you wish anything, nand’ paidhi?”

He wished a great deal. He said, for want of anything he could do, “I’d like a glass of shibei, nadi. Would you bring it, please?”

“Yes, nand’ paidhi.”

Instant power. More than fifty people completely, full-time dedicated to his wants and needs.

And he couldn’t safeguard Sandra Johnson and two stupid houseplants he’d put into grave danger.

God! Led by his weaknesses and not by his common sense, he’d made that phone call. Why the hell had he felt compelled to push the matter and try to get information he knew damned wellwas being withheld from him by the whole apparatus of the Mospheiran government and the rot inside it?

What did he thinkwas going to respond when he kicked it to see whether, yes, it was malevolent, and widespread, and it had everything he loved in its grip.

The drink arrived in the hands of a tall, gentle, non-human woman, who gracefully offered it on a silver platter, and went away with a whisper of slippered footfalls and satin coat, and left a hint of djossiflower perfume in her wake.

He finished the drink and set down the glass. The spring breeze blew through the sitting room, chill with spring and fresh with scents of new things.

He’d had a nice, tame little single-room apartment down the hill, before he’d come to this borrowed, controversy-dominated palace.

He’d had glass doors that opened onto a pretty little garden he’d shared with a Bu-javid cook and several clerks, trusted personnel, persons with immaculate security clearances. Never any noise, never any fuss. Two servants, a small office with no secretary at all.

But someone had broken into his little apartment one rainy night, whether a person of Tabini’s staff setting him up, or whether truly an attempt on his life, he didn’t know nor expected the persons who might have been responsible ever to say. He would never ask, for his part, since it seemed vaguely embarrassing to say it to persons who if they were human would be friends.

Persons whose turning against him would mean he’d have only duty left.

He was aware of a presence in the shadowed hall. He thought it was the servant spotting an empty glass. They were that good, sometimes seeming to have radar attuned to that very last sip, to whisk the glass away, perhaps zealous to restore the perfection of numbers in the room, perhaps that the night staff had to account for the historic crystal. He had no idea and had never asked.

He turned his head and saw Jago standing there.

“Are you well, Bren-ji?”

“Yes.” It was perhaps a lie he told her. He wasn’t even sure.

Perhaps Jago wasn’t sure, either. She walked in and stood where he could see her without turning his head.

“Is there trouble?” he asked her.

“Only a foolish boy who tried to ride the subway to the hill. One can’t reach the hill by the subway without appropriate passes, of course. But he carried identification. When he argued with the guards it rang alarms.”

“The boy from Dur?”

“He’s very persistent.”

“He’s not hurt, is he?”

“No, no, Bren-ji. But he isbecoming a great nuisance. Three letters today—”

“Three?”

“Felicitous three.” Jago held up three fingers. “Two would have been infelicitous. He was therefore compelled to send a third.”

He had to smile. And to laugh.

“One did,” Jago said slowly, “listen—to your phone call, Bren-ji.”

It was an admission of many things. And she came to him with that as an implied question.

There was a word, osi, that had no clear etymology, no relationship to any other word. But when one said it, one wanted a teacup full or a piece of information amplified to its greatest possible extent. He said it now, and Jago said quietly:

“This woman. One doesn’t recall her.”

“Sandra Johnson? A woman I saw socially, before you came.” There was no atevi word for dated. Or if there was, it was a set of words for social functions including bed-partners: he was definitely on shaky ground with that vocabulary.

And with Jago. They’d been—interested in each other. Curious, on one level. Aware—on another—that, being what they were, who they were, things being as they were, they couldn’t trifle with one another.

The air was suddenly charged. He didn’t know whether she felt it. He’d been celibate for almost a year, now, in a household full of women all of whom, including women he knew had grandchildren, acted as if they found him attractive. He’d met with too many memories tonight. He’d endangered a woman he’d slept with, trying to reestablish a connection he’d no business trying to activate. He might even have killedSandra Johnson. He didn’t think things had gone that far on Mospheira, on an island where in very many communities people didn’t lock their doors—but he was afraid for Sandra, and felt a guilt for that phone call that wouldn’t make an easy pillow tonight.

He wanted—

He wanted someone to fill the silence.

Someone like Barb. Sandra hadn’t been that way for him. A fun evening. A light laughter. No talk about the job.

But to Barb, he’d told more than he should. And when it was clear he wasn’t coming back any time soon, and when his actions had alienated a lot of the population of Mospheira, she’dmarried a government computer expert, whose clearances and whose indispensability to the State Department could assure her safety in ways he couldn’t.

Jago walked closer to his chair. Was there, in the warmth and scent and solid blackness of an ateva close at hand.

“I should have shot Hanks-paidhi,” Jago said, stating fact as she saw it.

“Possibly it was the right idea,” he said, and Jago’s hand rested on his on the arm of the antique chair.

“Nadi-ji.”

His heart beat in panic. Sheer panic. He thought of moving his hand to signal no. But a sexual No wasn’t what he wanted either, not forever.

“If a person associates with the powerful,” Jago said in that rich, even voice, the low timbre only an ateva could achieve, “there are penalties.”

“But they never expected the paidhi’s job to be that, Jago-ji. I didn’t. I knowyou think Barb failed me. But there isno Guild for her to appeal to. My family has no clan, no power. She went to a man whose connections in the government are more secure than mine.”

“And will Barb-daja help you?”

“If I could get to her—”

“What would she have done?”

“Checked on my mother.”

“And rescued her?”

“Barb can’t, Jago-ji. She has nowhere to go. She has no one to call on. There is no Guild. There’s none for Sandra Johnson. There isno help.”

“I have heard of po-lis.”

“Some of themaren’t reliable. And if you’re not inside the system you don’t know which ones.”

Jago took back her hand. And pulled up a chair. “Is this Sandra John-son knowledgeable of such things?”

“Shawn might help her. The Foreign Secretary. He might put her under some sort of protection. I don’t know.”

“And his superior? What of the President?”

He was suddenly looking not into the face of an ateva he trusted, but an Assassin, a guard in the man’chi of the aiji of Shejidan, asking things he had never quite admitted, like the real inner workings of decision-making. God knew and Tabini knew the President was not quick; but a helpless figurehead, he hadn’t quite admitted to.

Matters on the island had never been quite this desperate, either, unless he was a total fool and had scared himself into some paranoid fancy. Shooting—at the State Department windows.

“Jago-ji. I’m not sure. I don’t knowwho’s holding power. Hanks is using a radio transmitter, on an island. Tellme they can’t find her and stop her. They knowwho’s doing it. There isn’tbut one person on Mospheira who can speak fluent Ragi! They aren’t that stupid, Jago-ji! Stupid, but not thatstupid.”

“If I see her I willshoot her, Bren-paidhi. This is a person doing harm to the aiji’s interests and to you.”

What did he say? Yes?

“I regard you highly,” was what he found to say in Ragi. And what else could he say? Something that evaded moral connection to the ateva she was, and the plain truth and good sense she offered? “You were right, Jago-ji. You were right.”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I think so.” She rose and towered against the light, and walked to the door. “Banichi says go to bed and sleep.”

“Does he?” He was surprised. Then amused at the source of it. At both sources.

“Good night, nand’ paidhi.”

“Jago-ji.” He almost—almost—asked her to stay. No matter Banichi’s admonition. But she wouldn’t disobey that order, and he shouldn’t pose that conflict to her moral sense.

“I am also,” she added, “right about Barb-daja. The direction of her man’chi is not to you. She sought another place.—Shall I secure the computer?”

He turned it over to her, and walked out with her. But she went to the left, to the security station, and he went to the right, toward his bedroom, where servants converged and helped him to undress.

Jago’s shots were generally on target. Even the man’chi business, which had no human application.

But it wastrue. He and Barb had done each other a lot of damage, the same as he’d done tonight to Sandra.

Barb hadn’t—hadn’t told him about things. Barb had carried all the load until she couldn’t carry it any more. And he loved her for that.

But she’d acted at the last to save herself. Jago saw that part, too. Practical of Barb. Maybe even essential.

But– dammit—she could have just moved in with Paul. She didn’t have to make it legal. Thatsaid something final to the man she’d been illegal with for years.

It said—a lot of what an ateva had just observed. The drift was in a direction other than toward him.

He sat down on the immaculate bed, and turned out the light and pulled the covers over himself.

He was more tired than he’d thought.

Worried about Sandra. Worried about his mother and his brother, but he’d beenworried so long he’d worn out the nerves to worry. Things just were. Somebody had thrown paint on his mother’s building and the landlord was no doubt mad; it was in the news it was so notorious and somehow the atevi of the Messengers’ Guild who monitored such things hadn’t told Tano who consequently hadn’t told him.

But Banichi indicated they hadn’t told Tabini certain things, too, and that heads were about to be, the atevi word, collected.

He couldn’t help matters. He knew that now. He sank into that twilight state in which a hundred assassins could have poured through the windows and he’d have directed them sleepily to the staff quarters.

13

The television was on its way out. One servant dusted the table on which it had rested for more than half a year in the historic premises, another stood by with a gilt and porcelain vase which would replace it, and a third carried the incriminating modernism out to the kitchen where (rather than send the thing through the dissection of security when it had to come back again) it would hide in the rear of a cupboard of utensils that the Atageini lord would surely not inspect.

The cabinet that held the vegetables, especially the locker that held the seasonal meat, Bren would not lay odds on. Cook hadillicit tomato sauce. Cook had by a miracle of persuasion gotten it through Mospheiran customs (let Cooktalk to George Barrulin in the President’s office, Bren thought glumly: Cook might fare better than he had) and now the offending cans of sauce from a human-imported vegetable had to hide somewhere. One simply didn’t want to put anything through security examination if it could possibly be tucked away out of sight. Everything that went out of the apartment was a risk and a nuisance in its coming back in.

“I have the dread of Uncle opening a linen cabinet,” Bren said to Jase as they stood watching, “and being crushed by falling contraband.”

“They’ve even checked under the bed,” Jase said. “Will he?”

“I don’t think he’ll go that far.” He’d explained to Jase the importance, the deadly fragility of relations between Tatiseigi and Tabini, and the fact that on one level there was amusement in it; and on another, it was grimly, desperately serious, not only for the present, but for all the future of atevi and humans and Tabini’s tenure as aiji. “Ready?”

“ Hamatha ta resa Tatiseigi-dathasa.”

“Impeccable.”

It was. Jase had been working on that tongue-twisting Felicitous greetings to your lordship. Which wasn’t easier because the name was Tatiseigi.

“So,” Jase said. “Where isthe tomato sauce?”

“Cook’s bed.”

Jase’s nerves had been on all day, a skittish zigzag between panic and nervous humor. He laughed, and looked drawn thin and desperate. “I can’t do this. Bren, I can’t.”

“You’ll do fine.”

Uncle Tatiseigi had asked to see bothhuman residents, a point that had come to them by message from Damiri-daja this afternoon, and he had pointedly not told Jase that small fact, not wanting to alarm him. But either the old man was curious, or the old man was going to make at least a minor issue of the human presence, possibly to try to create an incident that would give him points against Damiri—or Tabini.

“Just, whatever he says to you, listen carefully and stick to the children’s language. He won’t attack you if you do that.”

“What do you mean attack?”

“Just stay calm. You don’t argue numbers with children or anyone speaking like a child. No matter if you know the adult version, stick to the athmai’in. Believeme and don’t be reckless.”

“I don’t see how you do this.”

“Practice, practice, practice.” There was a commotion at the front door. He went and looked from the hall, Jase tagging him closely, and met an oncoming wall of atevi with cameras, cable, lights, and all the accouterments of television. The television setwent out as not proper, not kabiu, in an observant household, while the television service for the Bu-javid Archives came into record the reception and to (unprecedented) broadcast live pictures of the restored lily frieze, the emblem of the Atageini, which, damned right, Uncle wanted on national television.

Tabini had discovered how very useful television was: the world in a box, Tabini called it. The little box that makes people think the world and the screen are the same thing. Tabini used it, shamelessly, when he wished to create a reality in people’s minds, and now Tatiseigi took to the medium, at least, no laggard to understand or to use thataspect of technology.

So there was an interview area being set up in the hallway near the historic dining room, so that for an evening the Atageini household would, hosting the aiji andthe Atageini lady closely allied to him and possibly intended to bear Tabini’s heir, be linked in the minds of the whole aishidi’tat, the whole Western Association, meaning the majority of the world.

And public interest? The rare chance to see, on live television, the residential floors of the Bu-javid, inside a historic residence, with all the numbers and balance of arrangements about the rich and famous apparent to the eye?

The national treasures on display? Museums on both sides of the strait could long for such treasures as filled this apartment, but no public tours such as frequented the downstairs legislative halls had everreached this floor. Such photography of historic treasures the security staff had allowed was limited to fine detail of certain objects, or set against a background, to prevent any public knowledge of the geography and geometry of the—in truth—rather simple and austere corridors outside, and of these fabled, far more ornate rooms. It was a television first.