Текст книги "Foreigner"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

He snapped his book shut, and thought of saying that most people waited to be asked, that he hadn’t had any courtesy and that he was getting damned tired of being walked past, ignored, talked down to and treated in general like a wayward child.

“Delighted to have company,” he said, and persuaded himself he really was glad to have someone to talk to. “Tell Djinana to set another place.—Is Jago coming?”

“Jago’s on her way to Shejidan.” Banichi’s voice floated back to him from the bedroom, as he headed for the servants’ quarters and the bath. “She’ll be back tomorrow.”

He didn’t even ask why. He didn’t ask why a plane bothered to take off in the middle of a thunderstorm, the second since noon, when it was presumably the aiji’s plane, and could observe any schedule it liked. Banichi disappeared into the back hall, and after a while he heard water running in the bath. The boiler must still be up. Banichi didn’t have to wait for hisbath.

As for himself, he went back to his ghost bells and his headless victims, and the shiploads of sailors lost to the notorious luck of Maidingi, which always fed on the misfortune of others when an aiji was resident in Malguri.

That was what the book said; and atevi, who believed in no omnipotent gods, who saw the universe and its quasi god-forces as ruled by bajiand naji, believed at least that najicould flow through one person to the next—or they had believed so, before they became modern and cynical and enlightened, and realized that superior firepower could redistribute luck to entirely undeserving people.

He had sat about in the dressing-robe all afternoon, developing sore spots in very private areas. He declined to move, much less to dress for dinner, deciding that if Banichi had invited himself, Banichi could certainly tolerate his informality.

Banichi himself showed up in the study merely in black shirt, boots, and trousers, somewhat more formal, but only just, without a coat, and with his braid dripping wet down his back. “Paidhi-ji,” Banichi said, bowing, and, “Have a drink,” Bren said, since he was indulging, cautiously, in a before-dinner drink from his own stock, which he knew was safe. He did have a flask of Dimagi, which he couldn’t drink without a headache, and eventual more serious effects, very excellent Dimagi, he supposed, since Tabini had given it to him, and he poured a generous glass of that for Banichi.

“Nadi,” Banichi said, taking the glass with a sigh, and invited himself to sit by the fire in the chair angled opposite to his.

“So?” The liquor stung his cut lip. “A man’s dead. Was he the same one who invaded my bedroom?”

“We can’t be sure,” Banichi said.

“No strayed tourist.”

“No tourist at all. Professional. We know who he is.”

“And still no filing?”

“A very disturbing aspect of this business. This man was licensed. He had everything to lose by doing what he did. He’ll be stricken from the rolls, he’ll be denied benefits of the profession, his instructors will be disgraced. These are no small matters.”

“Then I feel sorry for his instructors,” Bren said.

“So do I, nadi. They were mine.”

Dead stop, on that point. Banichi—and this unknown man—had a link of some kind? Fellow students?

“You know him?”

“We met frequently, socially.”

“In Shejidan?”

“A son of distinguished family.” Banichi took a sip and stared into the fire. “Jago is escorting the remains and the report to the Guild.”

Not a good day, Bren decided, having lost all appetite for supper. Banichi regarded him with a flat, dark stare that he couldn’t read—not Banichi’s opinion, nor what obligation Banichi had relative to Tabini versus his Guild or this man, nor where the man’chilay, now.

“I’m very sorry,” was all he could think to say.

“You have a right to retaliate.”

“I don’t want to retaliate. I never wanted this quarrel, Banichi.”

“They have one now.”

“With you?” He grew desperate. His stomach was upset. His teeth ached. Sitting was painful. “Banichi, I don’t want you or Jago hurt. I don’t want anybody killed.”

“But they do, nadi. That’s abundantly clear. A professional agreed with them enough to disregard Guild law—for man’chi, nadi. That’s what we have to trace—to whom was his man’chi? That’s all that could motivate him.”

“And if yours is to Tabini?”

Banichi hesitated in his answer. Then, somberly: “That makes them highly unwise.”

“Can’t we arrest them? They’ve broken the law, Banichi. Don’t we have some recourse to stop this through the courts?”

“That,” Banichi said, “would be very dangerous.”

Because it wouldn’t restrain them. He understood that. It couldn’t legally stop them until there wasa judgment in his favor.

“All they need claim is affront,” Banichi said, “or business interests. And how can you defend anything? No one understands your associations. The court hardly has a means to find them out.”

“And my word is worth nothing? My man’chiis to Tabini, the same as yours. They have to know that.”

“But they don’t know that,” Banichi said. “Even Idon’t know that absolutely, nadi. I know only what you tell me.”

He felt quite cold, quite isolated. And angry. “I’m not a liar. I am nota liar, Banichi. I didn’t contest with the best my people have for fifteen years to come here to lie to you.”

“For fifteen years.”

“To be sent to Shejidan. To have the place I have. To interpret to atevi. I don’t lie, Banichi!”

Banichi looked at him a long, silent moment. “Never? I thought that wasthe paidhl’s job.”

“Not in this.”

“How selective dare we be? When do you lie?”

“Just find out who hired him.”

“No contract could compel his action.”

“What could?”

Banichi didn’t answer that question. Banichi only stared into the fire.

“What could, Banichi?”

“We don’t know a dead man’s thoughts. I could only wish Cenedi weren’t so accurate.”

“Cenedi shot him.” So Cenedi and Ilisidi’s loyalties at least were accounted for. He was relieved.

But Banichi didn’t seem wholly pleased with Cenedi. Or, at least, with the outcome. Banichi took a sip of the drink warming in his hands and never looked away from the fire.

“But you’re worried,” Bren said.

“I emphatically disapprove these delivery vehicles. This is an unwarrantable risk. The tourists at least have a person counting heads.”

“You think that’s how he got in?”

“Very possible.”

“They’re not going to continue the tours. Are they?”

“People have had their reservations for months. They’d be quite unhappy.”

Sometimes he ran straight up against atevi mindset in ways he didn’t understand. Or expect.

“Those people were in danger, Banichi!”

“Not from him or us.”

Finesse. Biichi-ji.

“There were children in that crowd. They saw a man shot.”

Banichi looked at him as if waiting for the concluding statement that would make sense. As if they had totally left the subject.

“It’s not right, Banichi. They thought it was a machimi! They thought it was television!”

“Then they were hardly offended. Were they?”

Before he could follow thatline of reasoning, Djinana and Maigi arrived down the inner hall with the dinner cart.

With a selection of dishes, the seasonal and slices from the leftover joint. Banichi’s eyes brightened at the offering, as they seated themselves in the dining room and the covers came off the dishes. State of mourning or murderous intent, Banichi had no hesitation in loading his plate, and no diminution of appetite.

The cook had provided a selection of prepared fruits, very artistically arranged. That appealed. One could have exempted the prepared head of the unseasonal game as a cap for the stewpot, but Banichi lifted it by the ears and set it delicately aside, gratefully out of view behind the stewpot. Other dead animals stared down from the walls.

“This is excellent,” Banichi said.

Bren poked at the sliced meat. His nerves were jangled. The dining chair hurt. He took up his knife and cut a bite, trying to put ghost stories and assassins out of his mind. He found the first taste excellent, and helped himself to the sliced meat and a good deal of the spicy sauce he enjoyed over the vegetables.

“Is there,” he asked, in the lull eating made, “possibly any word on my mail? I know you’ve had your hands full, but—”

“I have, as you quaintly express it, had my hands full. Perhaps Jago will remember to check the post.”

“You could call her.” Temper flared up. Or a sense of muddled desperation. “Has anyoneexplained to my office where I am, or why?”

“I frankly don’t know that, paidhi-ji.”

“I want you to convey a message to them. I want you to patch me through on your communications. I know you can do that, from the security station.”

“Not without clearance. It’s a public move, if the paidhi takes to our security channels. You understand the policy statement that would make, absolute encouragement to your detractors and Tabini’s.”

“What happened to security?”

“Courier is still far better. Far better, nadi. Prepare your statement. I’ll send it the next time one of us carries a report.”

Banichi didn’t refuse him. Banichi didn’t say no. But it kept coming out to procrastination, I forgot, and, There’s a reason.

He ate the rest of the meat course in silence, favoring his sore mouth.

And questions still nagged him.

“ Wasit an accident, the power outage?”

“Most probably. To put a quarter of the homes in Maidingi township in the dark? Hardly the Guild’s style.”

“But you knew it last night. You knewsomeone was loose on the grounds.”

“I didn’t know. I suspected it. We had a perimeter alarm.”

Didwe? he thought bitterly. And asked, instead: “ Whereis Algini?”

“He’ll return with Jago.”

“Did he leave with Jago?”

“He took the commercial flight. Yesterday.”

“Carrying a report?”

“Yes.”

“For what? Forgive my frankness, Banichi-ji, but I don’t believe there’s any possible investigation to be done—to find the precise agency at work here, yes, but I don’t for a moment believe Tabini doesn’t know exactly what’s wrong and who’s behind it. I don’t believe you don’t know. I don’t believe you didn’t know where I was this morning.”

“Behind the ridge, mostly, for quite a while. I noticed your limping.”

Soreness didn’t help his mood. “You might have warned me.”

“Regarding what? That Ilisidi would go riding? She often does.”

“Dammit, if you’d told me there was the chance of a sniper, if you’d told me we’d be leaving the house, I might have come up with a reasonable objection.”

“You had a reasonable objection. You might have pleaded your recent indisposition. I doubt they would have carried you to the stables.”

“You didn’t tell me there was a danger!”

“There’s a constant danger, nadi.”

“Don’t shove me off, dammit. You let me go out there. It’s harder to find an excuse for tomorrow, when I’m also committed to go. And am I safe then? I don’t always understand your sense of priorities, Banichi, and in this, I truly confess I don’t.”

“The tea was Ilisidi’s personal opportunity. And Cenedi was with us last night, during the search. Cenedi would have taken me if he’d intended to. I made that test.”

It took a moment for that to sink in. “You mean you gave Cenedi a chance to kill you?”

“When you willmake promises to strangers without consulting me, paidhi-ji, you do make my job more difficult. Jago was advised of the situation. Possibly Cenedi knew it, and knew that he had Jago yet to deal with, but Cenedi is notcontracted against you, I made amply certain of that. And I was between you and the estate at all times this morning.”

“Banichi, I apologize. Profoundly.”

Banichi shrugged. “Ilisidi is an old and clever woman. What did you talk about? The weather? Tabini?”

“Breakfast. Not breaking my neck. A mecheita called Babs—”

“Babsidi.” It meant ‘lethal.’ “And nothing else?”

He desperately tried to remember. “How it was her land. What plants grow here. Dragonettes.”

“And?”

“Nothing. Nothing of consequence. Cenedi talked about the ruin up there, and the cannon on the front lawn. —She ran me up a hill, I cut my lip… after that they were polite to me. And the touristswere polite to me. I gave them ribbons and signed their cards and we talked about families and where they came from.—Was either one a disaster, Banichi-ji—before some fool tried to cross the lawn? Advise me. I amasking for advice.”

Another of Banichi’s long, sober stares. Banichi’s eyes were the clearest, incredible yellow. Like glass. Just as expressive. “We’re both professionals, paidhi-ji. You arequite good.”

“You think I’m lying?”

“I mean that you’re no more off duty than I am.” Banichi lifted the flask and poured moderately for them both. “I have confidence in your professional instincts. Have confidence in mine.”

It came down to the fruit, and a creme and liqueur sauce. A man could be seduced by that, if his stomach weren’t uncertain from dinner conversation.

“If you’re running courier,” Bren said, when the atmosphere felt easier, “you can handle a written dispatch from me to my office on Mospheira.”

“We might,” Banichi said. “If Tabini approves.”

“Any word about that solar unit I wanted?”

“I’m afraid they’re prioritied, if they can find one. We’ve donated the generator we have. We have homes in the valley without power, elderly and ill persons—”

“Of course.” He couldn’t fault that answer. It was entirely reasonable. Everything was.

Confidence, Bren said to the creatures on the wall. Patience. Glass eyes stared back at him, some angry, some placidly stupid, having awaited their hunters with equanimity, one supposed.

Banichi said he had business to attend—reports to write. In longhand, one supposed.

Or not. Djinana came and took the dishes away, and lit the oil lamps, having blown out the candelabra in the dining room.

“Will you need anything more?” Djinana asked; and, “No,” Bren said, thinking to himself that of individuals who didn’t get regular hours or a fair explanation around this place, Djinana was chief. One wondered where Tano was—Tano, who was supposed to be his personal staff. While Algini was off in Shejidan. “I’m sure I won’t. I’ll read until bedtime.”

“I’ll lay out your night things,” Djinana said.

“Thank you,” he murmured, and picked up his book and took the chair by the fire, where, if he sat at an angle, with the lamps on the table beside him, the two light sources made reading at least moderately possible. Live flame flickered. He had discovered that primary good reason for light bulbs.

Djinana whisked the cart away with the dishes—the man never so much as rattled a glass when he worked. The candles were out in the dining room, leaving it a dark cavern. Elsewhere the fire cast horned and large-eared shadows about the room, and danced in the glass eyes of the beasts.

He heard Djinana open the armoire in the bedroom, and heard him go away again.

After that was a curious quiet about the place. No rain, no thunder, nothing but the crackle of the fire. He read, he turned pages—which sounded amazingly loud, on a rare romance in the histories, no one bent on feud, no inter-clan struggles, no dramatic leaps from Malguri tower, and not a drowning to be had, just a romantic couple who met and courted at Malguri, who happened to be the aijiin of two neighboring provinces, and who had a plethora of talented children.

Pleasant thought, that someone who slept in these rooms hadn’t come to a bad end; interesting, to have a notion of romantic goings-on, the gifts of flowers, the long and tender relationship of two people who, being heads of state, never quite had a domicile except Malguri, in the fall. It was a side of themselves atevi didn’t show to the paidhi—unless one counted flirtations he never knew whether he should take seriously. But that was how it went, a number of small gifts, tied to each other’s gates, or sent by third parties. Atevi marriages didn’t always mean cohabitation. Often enough they didn’t, except when there were minor children in question—and sometimes then cohabitation lasted and sometimes it didn’t. What atevi thoughtor what atevi feltstill eluded him through the atevi language.

But he likedthe aijiin of Malguri the way he’d likedthe old couple with the grandchildren, touring together, he supposed, looking for adventures… maybe not cohabiting: nothing guaranteed that.

And long as paidhiin had been on the continent, they had discovered no graceful way to ask, through atevi reticence to discuss their living arrangements, their addresses, their routines or their habits—it all fell under ‘private business,’ and no one else’s.

He thought he might ask Jago. Jago at least found amusement in his rude questions. And Jago was amazingly well read. She might even know the historic couple.

He missedJago. He wouldn’t have had a near-fight with Banichi if Jago had been here. He didn’t know why Banichi had insisted on inviting himself to supper, if he had to spend it in a surly mood.

Something hadn’t gone well, perhaps.

In a day which had included Cenedi shooting a man and that man turning out to be one Banichi knew—damned right something hadn’t gone right today, and Banichi had every reason to be in a rotten state of mind. That atevi didn’tshow it and habitually understated the case didn’t mean Banichi wasn’t upset—and didn’t mean Banichi might not himself wish Jago were here. He supposed Banichi hadn’t had a good time himself, having a surly human displaying an emotional load an atevi twelve-year-old wouldn’t own to.

He supposed he even owed Banichi an apology.

Not that he wanted to give one. Because he understood didn’t mean he was reconciled, and he wished twice over that Jago hadn’t gone to Shejidan today, Jago being just slightly the younger, a little more reticent, as he read her now, even shy, but just slightly more forthcoming than Banichi once she decided to talk, whether Jago was more so by nature or because Tabini’s man’chididn’t lie lightly on anyone’s shoulders, least of all Banichi’s.

His eyes stung with reading in the flickering light; keeping the fire lively enough to cast light to the chair made the fireside uncomfortably warm, and the oil lamps made the air thick. He found himself with a mild headache, and got up and walked, quietly, so as not to disturb the staff, into the cooler part of the room—too restless to sleep, yet.

He missed his late-night news. He missed being able to call Barb, or even, God help him, Hanks, and say the things he dared say over lines he knew were bugged. He was all but down to talking to himself, just to hear the sound of human language in the silence, to get away, however briefly, from immersion in atevi thoughts and atevi reasoning.

A motor started, somewhere. He stopped still and listened, decided someone was leaving the courtyard and going down to the town, or somewhere in between, and who thatwas, he had a fair notion.

Damn, he thought, and went to the window, but one couldn’t see the courtyard from there because of the sideways jut of the front hall. A pin held the latch of the side window panels, and he pulled that to see if he could tell whether the car was going down the main road or off into the hills, or whether he was about to trigger a nonhistorical security alarm by opening the latch.

Only the airline transport van, hell. Malguri had a van of its own. Food and passengers came up the road. They could have gotten him from the airport.

But Banichi had thought otherwise, perhaps. Perhaps he wanted to sound things out before relying on Cenedi.

Perhaps he still had his doubts.

The sound of the motor went up and around the walls.

He couldn’t tell. But the night air coming in was crisp and cold after the stuffiness of the room. He drew in a great breath and a second one.

First night he had been here that it hadn’t been raining, the first hour of full dark, and the sky above the lake and the mountains to the east were so clear and black and cold one could see Maudette aloft, faintly red, and Gabriel’s almost invisible companion, a real test of eyesight, on Mospheira.

The night air smelled wonderful, loaded with wildflowers, he supposed; and he hadn’t realized how he’d missed the garden outside his room; or how pent up he’d felt.

He’d been able, on clear nights on Mt. Allan Thomas, to see the station just around sunset or sunrise. He didn’t keep up with its schedule the way he had in his youth, when Toby and he had used to go hiking in the hills, when they’d used to tell stories about the Landing, and imagine—it was embarrassing, nowadays—that there were atevi guerrillas hiding in the high hills. They had used to have imaginary wars up there, shooting atevi by the hundreds, being shot at by fictitious atevi villains, about as good as the atevi machimi about secret human guerrillas supported by egomaniacs secretly concealing their base aboard the station… the Foreign Star, as atevi had called it in those long past and warlike days.

At least they’d achieved a common mythology, a common past, a common set of heroes and villains—and which was which only depending on point of view.

He never had mentioned to Tabini that his father was Polanski’s descendant several illegitimate generations down the line, the Polanski who’d generaled the standoff on Half Moon Beach, the one that had kept atevi reinforcements off Mospheira.

Nothing Poianski’s remote descendant had anything to do with—nothing, in his present job, that he wanted to admit to.

One made progress as one could. He wished atevi children didn’t see humans as shadow-players and madmen; he wished human children didn’t play at shooting atevi in the woods. The idea came to him of making that a major theme in his winter speech to the assembly… but he didn’t know how one got at all the film and all the television on both sides which kept reinforcing it all.

But not totally smart, with realities as they were, to be standing with the fire at his back. Jago had pulled him away from this very window last night… a danger from the windows or the roof of the other wing seemed stupid. But anybody could have a boat on the lake, he supposed, though not close enough to give an assassin a good target. Anybody could land on Malguri’s shore, give or take the walls and the cliffs below the walls, which were formidable.

He stepped back and began to close the window. Lights flashed on all about him. An alarm began to ring as he blinked in the glare of electric light, and slammed the window shut and latched it, heart beating in utter startlement, with the sound of bare feet crossing the wooden floor of the next room.

Tano showed up, stark naked, gun in hand, Djinana close behind him, and Maigi after that, Maigi dripping wet and wrapped in a towel, with the thump of people running out in the halls, everywhere in Malguri, the alarm still sounding.

“Did you open a window?” Tano asked. “Nadiin, I did, I’m sorry.”

His rescuers drew a collective breath as the latch rattled in the next room, and Tano dismissed Djinana in that direction with a wave of his hand.

“Nadi, they’ve brought us on-line again,” Tano said, “Your security had rather you not open the windows, for your own protection. Particularly at night.”

Djinana had let someone in from the outside hall. Cenedi showed up with Djinana and a couple of the dowager’s guard, to hear Tano say, “The paidhi opened the window, nadi.”

“Nand’ paidhi,” Cenedi said. “Please, hereafter, don’t.”

“I beg your pardons,” he said. The alarm was still going, jangling his nerves. “Can someone please turn off the alarm?”

Cenedi gave the orders. It still took time to sort out, and the oil lamps all had to be put out before he could get his rooms clear of staff.

He sank down on the side of his bed after the clatter and the commotion had died, after the doors and windows were shut, asking himself where Banichi had been and what black thoughts the dowager must be having about him at the moment.

Damned sloppy, having an alarm system down with the power. It wasn’t Banichi’s style. He didn’t think it was Cenedi’s. He didn’t think he’d seen everything that guarded Malguri. Solar-batteried security, he’d bet on it. They had the technology.

It didn’t keep the paidhi from waking the house and looking like a fool.

It didn’t make Ilisidi happier with him. He could bet on that, too.