Текст книги "Inheritor"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

A peaceful approach. Banichi had said that was her intent, at least.

23

A prop plane, a four-seater, sat beyond the dish of the earth station, marking the location of the airstrip, and beyond it, a low-lying, modern building, was the single-story sprawl of the operations center.

The vast dish passed behind them, the dusk deepened to near dark, and the company stayed close around the dowager as they rode. Bren eyed the roof ahead of them and had his own apprehensions of that long flat expanse, and the chance of an ambushing shot from that convenient height. He was anxious about their safety and hoped Banichi and Jago in particular wouldn’t draw the job of checking out the place. It looked like very chancy business to him, and chancier than his security usually let him meet.

They stopped. A good thing, he thought.

But the mechieti had scarcely gotten their heads down for a few stolen mouthfuls of grass when the door to the place opened, bringing every mechieta head up and bringing a low rumble and a snort from the mechiet’-aiji, Babsidi, who was smelling the wind and was poised like a statue, one that inclined toward forward motion.

“Babs,” Ilisidi cautioned him. One atevi figure had left the doorway and walked toward them at an easy pace, nothing of hostility about the sight, except the black clothing, and the fact that the man—it wasa man—was armed with a rifle which he carried in hand.

But about the point that Bren was ready to take alarm, the man lifted a hand in a signal and one of Ilisidi’s men rode forward to meet him.

Not even of Tabini’s man’chi, Bren thought, though Banichi had said Tabini was moving; it seemed to be all Ilisidi’s operation. But it was reassuring, at least, that they had had someone on site; perhaps, as Banichi had also said, preparing security for Ilisidi’s tour, much as Tabini’s security had prepared the way for him on tour.

There was some few moments of discussion between the two, then a hand signal, and a few more of Ilisidi’s security went up to the door.

A shiver began in Nokhada’s right foreleg and ran up the shoulder under Bren’s knee. Otherwise the mechieti were stock still. Creatures that had been interested only in grazing at other breaks were staring steadily toward the building, nostrils wide, ears swiveling. They had not put on the war-brass, the sharp tusk-caps that armed the mechieti with worse than nature gave them; but the attitude was that of creatures that might take any signal on the instant and move very suddenly.

But Cenedi and Ilisidi together began to move quite slowly and the rest of the mechieti came with them, across the narrow runway, onto the natural grass of the building frontage.

Men slid down. Ilisidi signaled Babsidi to drop a shoulder, and stepped down from the saddle, retrieving her cane on the way as Cenedi swung down.

Bren tapped Nokhada’s shoulder, nudged her with his foot and as she lowered her forequarters, swung off, keeping his grip on the rein until he was sure that was what he should have done. But everyone was getting down and while Banichi moved off to talk to Cenedi, Jago showed up, and called Jase and the boy in close.

“One expects no difficulty,” Jago said. “But follow me.”

They let the mechieti go, merely tying reins to the saddle ring, and Bren was acutely conscious of the gun he carried in the inside pocket of his jacket as more than a nuisance and a weight that thumped when Nokhada hit her traveling gaits. He was armed and able at least to shoot back. Jase and the boy were not. He gave no odds on Ilisidi, who passed into the building surrounded by rifles and sidearms.

So did they, into a double-doored foyer and into a broadcast operations center, one side wall with two tiers of active television screens and six rows of consoles, some occupied and active despite the presence of armed guards.

An official had joined them, bowed, and offered courtesies, offering drinks and a supper, which the official swore were under the guard of Guild security.

“I’ll see this place first,” Ilisidi said and, walking with the aid of her cane, toured the long rows of counters and consoles with Cenedi beside her, with a handful of her young men around her, as others took up posts on all sides. The technicians couldn’t quite remain oblivious to what was going on, or to the fact that guns were visible: nervous glances attended her movements and those of the men on guard.

There was, the dowager was informed, in a stillness so great there was no need of close eavesdropping, this central command center; and there were, down that hall, the offices, the rest areas, and through the door, the adjacent staff barracks. Her men had been there, one said, and they had posted a guard there and at the outlying service buildings.

“I assure you, aiji-ma,” the director said, “everything is in order.”

“And the paidhi’s messages?”

“Nand’ dowager?” The director seemed dismayed; and whack! went the dowager’s cane on a console end. A score of workers jumped. One bent over in an aborted dive under the counter, which she turned into a search after an escaped pen, and quickly surfaced, placing the pen shamefacedly before her.

Scared people, the Messengers, with officers of their Guild trafficking with the other side, and the Assassins’ Guild guarding the aiji-dowager, a gray eminence in the chanciest atevi politics. Ostensibly she was on a holiday tour including the old fortress, which this communications nerve center had to have known was coming, and the nature of that old fortress some here had to know.

They had to believe she was probablyon the aiji’s side at a moment when other things were going chancy, rapidly, in electronic messages sailing all over the continent.

“Where,” Ilisidi asked, in that shocked silence, in which only Ilisidi moved, “ whereis the paidhi’s mail and whyhas the communication run through this centergone repeatedly amiss? Is this the fault of individuals? Or is this a breakdown in equipment? Does fault lie in this place? Can anyone explain to me why messages lie in this place and do not move out of it in a timely manner? Is it a spontaneous fault of the equipment?”

“No, aiji-ma,” the director said in a voice both faint and steady. “There is no fault of the equipment. I have taken charge of this facility in the absence of the senior director.”

“You are?”

“Brosimi of Masiri Province, aiji-ma. Assistant director of Mogari-nai by appointment of my Guild.”

One did not miss the aiji-ma, that was the address of someone at least nominally loyal; and Ilisidi, diminutive among her guards, was the towering presence in the room.

Ilisidi walked further, looked at one console and the next, and all the while Cenedi and Banichi were near her; but so was a man named Panida, whose talents and function in Ilisidi’s household had always seemed to be very like Tano’s. Panida was generally, in Ilisidi’s apartment in the Bu-javid, near the surveillance station that was part of every lord’s security. And now he paused here and there at certain idle and vacant consoles. Once he flipped a switch. Whether it had been on or off, Bren did not see.

“Nand’ director,” Ilisidi said. “This is a very thin staff I see. Are there ordinarily more on this shift?”

“Yes, aiji-ma. But they went down to Saduri Township.”

“Well, well, and will that improve the efficiency of this staff?”

“I assure the dowager such will be the case.” The director made surreptitious signals to his staff, who uncertainly rose from their seats and, almost as a body, bowed in respect.

“Nadiin.” Ilisidi nodded, and said, by way of introduction: “Bren-paidhi. Jase-paidhi. And their devoted escort, the heir of the lord of Dur.”

“Nand’ director,” Bren said as faces turned toward them. “Nadiin.”

A second round of bows and nods of heads. And the hasty but respectful movement of a young woman who gathered up a heavy stack of paper and proclaimed it, “nand’ dowager, here are all the messages routed through this station in the last ten days. With great respect, aiji-ma.”

“And the messages for the paidhiin?”

A middle-aged man moved to a desk and carefully, with an anxious eye on the behavior of security, gathered up a smaller handful of printout. “This is the phonetic log and transcript, aiji-ma, during the same period, but the translators have all left.”

“One assures you, nadi, the paidhiin do not need translators.” Ilisidi with a casual backhand waved the man in their direction, and the man brought the log and bowed.

The dowager wanted the record read, Bren said to himself. “Thank you, nadi,” he said to the anxious technician, took the thin volume, and set it down. It was the end of the record he wanted, and he was accustomed to the phonetic transcription. He sat down and flipped the pages over to the latest messages.

There were Deana’s transmissions, as late as this morning, included in the limited transcript although they were in Ragi. A cursory glance proved them more grammatical and careful than her conversation in the language—but then, on Mospheira, Deana had her dictionaries at her elbow.

Deana, however, could wait for a moment. For a moment he was on a search for things notnecessarily on government matters, things personal to him, which, if he could find while doing his job—

He was aware of Jase leaning on the counter, reading over his shoulder.

He was aware of his hand trembling as he turned the pages back and on a deep intake of breath he discovered the fear he’d not letsurface since he’d failed to get through on the phones was still very much alive.

More of Deana’s junk. It made up the bulk of the stack and it made him mad. He wanted his own messages. He wanted answers from Toby, what had happened, how his family fared.

He found it.

It said, Bren, mother’s out of surgery. They said it was worse than they thought. But she’s going to be all right. I tried to call. The lines went down. I hope…

The line blurred and he blinked it clear.

… hope you get this. I hope you’re all right. I was sorry we were cut off. I shouldn’t have said the things I did, and I knew it, and all that other crap came out. I wanted to say I love you, brother. And I said that nonsense.

His hand shook uncontrollably. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t think for a moment, except that it wasn’t allowable for him to show disturbance in front of a roomful of atevi, in the service of the dowager. Too much was at issue. He had too much to do. He shoved his way out of the seat, told himself a restroom might give him a moment to get himself together without anyone being the wiser if he just moved slowly and showed no distress. Livesrode on his composure. He couldn’t become the subject of gossip or disgrace to the dowager.

“Jago-ji,” he said. His eyes were brimming and he tried not to blink. “It’s a little warm. Where’s a restroom, please?”

“Nandi.” Jago moved past Jase and, thank God, between him and the rest of the room. “This way.”

“Bren?” Jase asked him.

“Stay there!” he said to Jase, and found he could talk, and if he could get privacy enough to clear his eyes without making a fool of himself, he’d be fine and back before anyone questioned his reactions.

Jago, meanwhile, brought him to the side hall, and to a restroom door, and inside, all the while one could have heard a pin drop outside.

“Bren-ji?”

“It’s all right.” There was a wall basin, and he ran cold water and splashed it into his face. Jago handed him a towel. Atevi restrooms had no mirrors. He trusted he hadn’t soaked his hair. He’d gotten his eyes clear but his gut was still in a knot. “Jago-ji, I’m sorry. I’m fine. How do I look?”

“Ill,” Jago said. “What did you read, Bren-ji?”

He tried to frame an answer. Good newsseemed a little extravagant. He truly wasn’t doing well.

The door cracked. Jago held it with her hand, protective of him. Jase said, “Bren?”

“In a moment, Jase.” Adrenaline surged up, annoyance, anger, he didn’t know what. But Jase persisted.

“I have to talk to him, nand’ Jago. Please.”

“Let him in, nadi-ji,” Bren said, thinking by the tone of Jase’s voice he might have found something urgent in the record. Jago let the door open and Jase slipped in, while he knew the room outside would be concluding something was direly wrong.

“I need to talk to you,” Jase said. “I read the message. I need to talk to you. Alone.”

He didn’t understand. He damned sure didn’t want to discuss his personal life. He had a great deal else weighing on him.

But part of that great deal else was Jase’s cooperation.

“Jago,” he said.

“I will not leave you, Bren-ji.”

Nor should. Jago took herself to the side, however, and back a pace to the wall.

That left Jase as alone as he could manage in a tiny space; and Jase ducked his head and took a breath in the manner of a man with an unpleasant task in front of him. “Bren,” Jase said in a low voice, and went on in his own language, “Yolanda’s trying to get away. She’s coming here. She’s going to try.”

That took several heartbeats to listen to. And a few more to try to figure. Yolanda Mercheson, Jase’s partner from the ship, was going to leaveMospheira?

“Why?” was the only thing he could say, not When? Not How? which were backed up and waiting, but at that point, Cenedi opened the door.

“Nandiin. Is there a problem?”

“We’re all right,” Bren said. His nerves were still wound tight, and he realized that the dowager was being kept waiting. “A moment, Cenedi-ji. Please excuse me to the dowager for just a moment.” One didn’t dosuch a thing; but he did. “Jase. Why? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know the details. I just know she’s coming here. It’s her judgment she can’t work with the island.”

Giving up on Mospheira? The ship was writing off the human population.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “And we’re going to have to explain this to the dowager. When is she doing this?” Jase’s sudden passion for the seashore began to nag at the back of a mind grown suspicious, over the years, of every anomaly. “Where did you make contact? When?”

“On the phone,” Jase said in a faint voice; and Jase was white-faced and sweating. “We had it arranged before we came down, that if one of us found the place we were in impossible, if demands were being put on us that we couldn’t accept, we’d cross the water somehow. And she—called me on the phone and that was how I knew. I knew I had to come at least to the coast. And then if she made it I was bound to find out about it if I was with you, so I could get her—get her to the capital. But I didn’t know it was so big out here. I didn’t know it—”

“Jase, that story’s got so many holes in it—”

“I’m not lying.”

“You were just going to flit over to the coast and pick her up—on what? A boat? A plane? Or is she going to hike over?” He was too shaken right now to be reasonable. Temper was very close to the surface. “How did you know? And don’t tell me you made a phone call I don’t know about. Anything that came into the apartment I doknow about, unless it walked in on two legs.”

“No. It didn’t. We had it arranged, Bren, we didn’tknow what we were putting ourselves into, and we knew there was a potential for problems with the atevi side; we knew there was a potential for problems on the island, too, but we really thought if things broke down they’d break down here, not there. So we said—if we had to signal trouble—one of us would say—would say there was a family emergency. We figured it was the one thing even atevi might understand and let one of us reach the other. And whoever—whoever had to run for it, it was going to be the other one who had somebody get sick. Or die, if it was a life and death situation. She said my father died, Bren. She’s in real trouble.”

He mighthave let expression to his face. He wasn’t entirely sure. He was angry. He was embarrassed, and angry, and had a clear idea Jago followed most of it. He’d been through the entire government with Jase’s lie. He’d intervened in an already touchy situation with a Guild half of whose local members had fled the site they were standing in.

“I didn’t know the atevi,” Jase said. “I didn’t understand the way things are set up here. I didn’t know you had realproblems yourself, and then I did know and I didn’t know how I was going to make it work and get her to the mainland when you had far worse troubles than I could claim to and you weren’t getting your family out. I knew it wasn’t going to work the way we’d planned, and I felt like hell about your situation, and I didn’t know what to do except get over here somehow and get to the shore and know if she made it I’d be here—”

“You know,” Bren said, with far better control of his voice than he thought he’d have, “you know I could take about any of it, piece at a time. I could understand your lying to me. I could accept you had to. But you took after meabout lying, Jase. You went all high and holy about mylying, and you wanted meto apologize to you, when you damned well knew it was the other way around, Jase, that’s what I can’t understand.”

“I didn’t know I could believe you!”

“And now you can.”

“Now I do,” Jase said.

“Wasn’t the plan that we’d sendfor her? Or was this something else, Jase? Are we hearing one more story?”

“I didn’t want to call for her to come over here into something worse than she was in. And I didn’t dare give her a come-ahead. I was with strange security. I couldn’t get you for four days, Bren. I couldn’t ask the staff. You said be careful with them. By then it was too late. My call to my mother—the ship hadn’t heard from Yolanda. Not in four days. And I didn’t know what to do.”

“So you want to come out here. And it’s not what you expected. And nowyou trust me.”

“Everything you’ve told me,” Jase began, but now hisvoice was shaking. “Everything so far makes sense. I believe Yolanda’s leaving the island is tied to what Deana Hanks is doing, it’s tied to everything you’ve told me. I’ve been trying all the way out here to find a way to tell you what was going on, but every time I tried I ran into something elsethat wasn’t what you’d led me to think. I didn’t know but what Yolanda was leaving the island withHanks. But I don’t think so, now. By everything I’ve heard, I don’t think so. These people outside don’t make me think so. The business in the apartment didn’t make me think so. The dowager doesn’t. But I just haven’t known what to do, Bren. I tried to find out the truth—and at the first you were lying to me, and you work for the Mospheiran government, andfor the aiji, and I didn’t know where you stood, and everything was coming apart.”

That made sense. The fishing trip. The damned fishing trip. Every lie they’d told each other, every difference of perceptions two hundred years of separation made in two sets of humans.

And if Yolanda Mercheson was pulling out of Mospheira, there were going to be some angry and desperate people on the island, who were only going to make matters more tense and more desperate for all of them remotely involved.

Forces on various sides of atevi concerns were moving on the mainland. Everything that had been going forward was still in motion and now human troubles were linked into it.

“You and I had better level with the dowager, is what we’d better do,” Bren said. “There are operations going on all over the coast. It may be a hostile reaction Hanks meansto stir up, if your partner’s given away her intentions. If she and Hanks have had a falling-out, it could be whyHanks is doing what she’s doing in the first place, trying to start a war here so the ship won’t deal with us. Or it may be as simple and stupid as I think it is: she doesn’t know what in hell she’s messing with. Years in the program and a week being withatevi and she still doesn’t figure it.—Jago-ji, nadi.” He changed languages, and went for the door, concerned at the time slipping away from them. “How would Yolanda come, Jasi-ji? By boat? By plane?”

“She can’t fly. That’s certain. She couldsteal a boat. But the storm—”

“Handling a boat’s no given, either. Stay with me.” He walked into the communications center, walked past concerned technicians and the boy and the dowager’s security to speak to Ilisidi herself. “Nand’ dowager,” he said, “my partner says that the other ship-paidhi has quit her post.”

“Quit.”

“And is leaving the island and coming to the mainland for refuge. Likeliest by boat. We don’t know when. We don’t know where.”

“And thatis in these messages you read?”

“No, nand’ dowager,” Jase said for himself. “I knew by a phone call days ago. Nand’ Bren had noknowledge of it. I wished finally—” Jase’s voice was trembling, and steadied. “I wished to tell it before now. I apologize, nand’ dowager.”

“It was a code by conversation,” Bren interjected, “aiji-ma. Security couldn’t possibly detect it. I didn’t.”

“Well,” Ilisidi said, and while a foul temper was possible, when it was entirely justified, in fact, it didn’t happen, though nerves all around were drawn tight. “Well.” Ilisidi stood leaning on her cane. “And in this night of human secrets, in this night with serious consequences on every hand and fools attempting to overthrow all established order, what will happen on the island, nand’ paidhi? What hashappened? Disasters? Or better news.”

Bren found his hands trembling again. He didn’t want to go into the business with his family and he was sure someone on Ilisidi’s staff had read the message by now, since it had sent Jase rushing after him, and had stalled everyone until he could sort matters out in the restroom.

“I’m sure that they’ll try to stop her, nand’ dowager.” He had one resource left, one thing Shawn had given him, and as best he could figure it was time to try it.

It was a connection into the international phone system he’d done everything to avoid making: the National Security people had had their hands on his computer during his last visit, and somethinghad happened when he’d stopped on his way to the airport to update his files: a huge amount of information had flooded into his computer storage, data and programs he’d downloaded onto removable storage once he’d realized it. And the Foreign Secretary having gone so far as to slip the codes he had under his cast to get them onto the mainland with him, he figured that Shawn intended them for a dire emergency and not just a phone-home-soon, Bren.

He also figured that by the time he’d found the note, far later than Shawn had intended, things were vastly changed and the people in the State Department and in the Defense Department who were in charge of such things had probably put something lethal on that access, something that would render his computer worse than useless.

He’d no facilities or knowledge to figure out such destructive actions. He’d not dare connect it in again to any computer system for fear of what he might bring with it. He just hoped the contact he was trying wouldn’t destroy the computer’s unconnected usefulness to him, in his translations and the other things he used it for, right down to his personal notes.

But, foreseeing the day, he’d backed up what he could. And he couldn’t avoid the direct contact. It was a reciprocating set of operations that would flow back and forth—if he got in.

He used the keyboard. He entered what he had. He sat, with a human by him who wasa computer tech from a system vastly more advanced than his, who didn’t, Jase said, know as much about what Jase called these early machinesas he knew about atevi. Jago was there. Banichi was. Cenedi was. And at the critical keystroke, the computer telltales lit up, flickered, and kept flickering. He sat and listened for the vocal output, which he didn’t believe would come.

But relays were clicking. It sounded as if relays were clicking. On the State Department lines, if that was how he’d gotten in, there was a robot, not a human operator. If the numbers were good, the call went to another robot.

But if what he feared was true, the second robot would be deactivated, the one that once had been able to get him through to the Foreign Office.

Next relay. He expected a voice. He could hardly believe it.

Then another click dashed his hopes. Click. Pause. Click. Click. Click.

“They must be routing the call to the far side of the island,” he said to Jase, and even as he said it, he suspected the call was doing exactly that: those were repeated long-distance connections, his codes still burrowing through walls and routing itself, please God, to the State Department and the Foreign Office, where if he was very, very lucky, at this late, after-dark hour, he might find the system routed itself withoutan operator, as could happen if your codes were very, very clean, to Shawn, wherever he was.

It rang.

“ You have reached—” It was the damn recording. He punched a manual code. And it rang another number.

“ Foreign Office.”

It was a young voice. Female. Very young. His heart sank.

“Shawn Tyers,” he said. “Code check. This is an emergency.”

“ Sir?”

“The Foreign Secretary.” God, God, they were hiring fools. “Put me through to the Foreign Secretary. You punch code 78. You have to do it from your console.”

“ Is this Mr. Cameron?” There was alarm in the voice. Excitement. And he didn’t want to admit it, but he saw no choice.

“Yes. It is. On diplomatic business. Life and death. Put me through.”

“ He’s gone home. I mean– he’s gone home up to the coast, Mr. Cameron. They shut the office.”

“They shut the office.”

“ Well—” The voice lowered. Sounded shaky. “ Mr. Cameron, the State Department shut it down. They’ve fired everybody in the whole Foreign Office, except I worked for both offices. I’m the night operator.”

“Polly?” He remembered a dark-complexioned young woman with a part down the middle of her head.

“ Yes, sir, Mr. Cameron. And they’re going to fire me, too. They record all the calls. I can’t call out. Is there something you can tell me that I can tell somebody?”

“Good night, Polly.”

“ Yes, sir.” The voice was very faint. Hushed as it was, she sounded like a child. “ Have a good evening, sir.”

Damn, he wanted to say. And wanted to slam the receiver down. But he didn’t. He drew a deep breath and calmed his nerves.

“Nand’ dowager, the State Department has discharged everyone in the Foreign Office. Even the Secretary has gone home. That’s what I’m told, and I believe the young woman who told me. Yolanda-paidhi may well have gone somewhere. But I’m very fearful she hasn’t.”

Jase, leaning on the counter, hung his head and looked utterly downcast.

“So,” the dowager said.

“I know where she’d come,” a young voice said.

And with one accord everyone looked at the boy from Dur.

24

There were maps. Ilisidi’s security had very detailed maps, which they had brought into the small, glass-walled conference room just off the main communications center. Out there beyond the glass, technicians of the Messengers’ Guild kept routine broadcasts going and, being mostly Saduri locals stranded away from their homes by the crisis, gratefully had their suppers off the official buffet. In this room, standing around the conference table with the chairs pushed back to the glass, all of them that had to make the plans were the crowded but willing audience as Rejiri of Dur-wajran ran his hand over a profusion of numbers and topographical lines on the shoreline of Mospheira—including this area, which was not detailed on most atevi maps.

“Most illegal boats come from the Narrows, here,” Rejiri said with his fingers on the narrowest part of the strait, that nearest Aidin. “And there’s a very bad current in the Narrows, so it looks like a real good place to go across but it isn’t. Freighters know, but they come down from Jackson and catch the current and drive hard. They have the big engines, too. But the little boats, they can’t carry that much in their tanks, nand’ dowager, and if they go too hard they’ll run their tanks dry and especially if they don’t have a lot of extra tanks aboard they’ll be in a lot of trouble. If they leave out of Jackson and go with the current and the wind’s not in their faces off Aidin headland they can cut across and the current will just carry the little boats to Dur. But the sneaky thing is if you don’t know anything but boating in safe water and you don’t know you’re in the current and you think you’re going across, and you aren’t, you’re going way, way south. You want to have a lot of cans of fuel, a whole lot of cans. But if you run out or sometimes if you go out of Bretano—if you do that, and some do, they all come in right here.” The boy pointed to a spot on the outer shore, at the place where it turned in to Saduri Harbor—and drew a second breath. “That beach. If you drop a bottle in at Jackson or Bretano it’s got to come here. You can find all sorts of stuff after a storm. Just junk, most times. But if there’s a boat tried to smuggle stuff in, or if they don’t make Dur, they’ll break up on the rocks at the point or they’ll make landfall somewhere right along here. And weather’s been bad. Which could help them along but the seas are going to be awful, too.”

“What does he say?” Jase wanted to know. The boy had a rapid patter, an accent, and he was using words Jase didn’t know. Bren gave him the condensed version in Mosphei’.

“He’s saying the current through the strait is very strong. Boats starting from Mospheira if they don’t reach Dur, it carries them onto a beach near Saduri.”

“Water current.”

“Yes.” Hedidn’t know what caused a current. It wasn’t the time to find out. He had a council of war around him and Jase. The dowager was looking grimly at the map over which he was sure her knowledge of plans that might be affected was superimposing other considerations, and the boy went on.

“Nand’ dowager,” the boy said. “I could take the plane out there. I could get to Dur and tell my father you need help.”

Ilisidi scowled at the boy. “You don’t have a key.”

“One doesn’t need a key, nandi.”

“One forgot. Stealing airplanes is your trade. How doesone start it?”

“One pushes a button, nand’ dowager.”

“A security disaster. Stay here. I plan to charge your father your hourly keep.”

“But I could help!”

“Gods felicitous, boy, this is the communications headquarters for half the continent! Do you think we can’t phoneyour father?”