Invader (22 page)

Which must have hit something. Algini looked astonished, grim and silent as he tended to be, and said, "Nand' paidhi, it's my job," the way Jago would sometimes remind him.

Even Banichi and Jago respected Algini — Tano, who'd taken until after Malguri to show his expressions, had him for a partner — and in this moment Bren saw qualities in Algini that he'd either been blind to, or that Algini hadn't let
him
see before; qualities which said this was, in human terms, a man who did his duty because that was what he expected of himself.

And all those boxes. Saidin was observing from the doorway, and he gave the matter into her hands. "Please," he said, "have the staff do the arranging. I have all confidence in your judgment, nand' Saidin. Algini, please rest. Banichi and Jago aren't here. I don't know where they are. But I'm sure they'd say so."

"Nand' paidhi," Algini said quietly, "one would be glad to do that, thank you, yes."

A hell of a household, he said to himself, the lot of them in bandages and patches. Algini was ready to collapse on his face, by all he could figure, but before they could clear the boxes out of the vestibule, the light at the door flashed, the security wire went down, the door opened and Jago came in.

"'Gini-ji," Jago said, in some evident pleasure, and there were more bows, and even more shoulder-slapping than between Algini and Tano. "One is glad. One is very glad."

But straightway Jago looked to have remembered something forgotten, said, "Bren-ji, pardon," and gave him a message cylinder, one with Tabini's seal.

Bren halfway expected it. He stood in the sea of boxes, with his security looking on, with the staff beginning to carry away this item and that, and saw the date and time as this evening and the place as the blue room.

He wasn't ready, not emotionally — maybe not mentally. He hadn't been ready for anything they'd thrown at him yet, except in the conviction, already taken, that he had to try and he couldn't, on the moment's bereaved, deranged thought, do worse than Mospheira's President and experts had done, so far as falling into what the paidhi, the unique individual actually experienced in foreign negotiation, saw as a trap.

The paidhi could be wrong, of course.

The paidhi could be wrong up and down the board.

But he went out at the appointed time with his notes and his computer, and went to the lift in Jago's company. Now, if never before in his career, he had to focus down and have his wits about him.

And he was scared stiff.

He had to think in Mosphei' in a handful of minutes, which required a complete mental turnover — granted they could raise the ship at all, had to go back and forth between the two languages, which required a compartmentalization he didn't like to do real-time.

The official document delivered to him had chased Tabini's note: the formal announcement of decision on his request, a parchment heavy with ribbons and legislative seals, which he was requested to return, and which he carried in his hand. The legislatures had argued their way past midnight last night and concluded a general resolution to see where contact might lead: Would the paidhi, that immense document said in brief, kindly intercede and convey the salutations of the Association to the ship, the aiji willing?

Tabini's note had put it more succinctly, had given him the hour of the meeting and said:
The legislature will re-enter session today on a special motion from the eastern provinces
. That meant the rebel provinces were raising some issue.

And Tabini's note had continued: By
suppertime the whole matter must be fait accompli by way of Bu-javid systems or we will be awash in additional motions.

Chimati sida'ta
. The beast under dispute would already be stewed, as the atevi proverb had it: the aiji and the paidhi-aiji had authority granted by the vote last night until some vote today negated it or delayed it for study or did something else creatively pernicious to Tabini's interests. Therefore the haste.

The vote, however, did not convey authority from Mospheira — who had sent no response to his messages, no response to Tabini's message to the President of Mospheira. He
had
hoped, he had remotely hoped — and knew he was creating serious trouble not only for himself, but for everyone in the Department who backed him, in proceeding without authority. He regretted that as a personal, calculated and depressingly necessary betrayal.

But the committee that would have to answer him had the nature of committees even on this side of the strait, and possibly throughout the universe: ask it a question and it felt compelled to make a formal ruling, which in the time frame of a Mospheiran committee, far worse than the ones he dealt with here, might arrive next year, once the message had hit — the President's council hardly moved faster.

If They, meaning the senior officials in the State Department, hanged the paidhi for it — at this point,
chimati sida'ta
, they had to catch him first.

If They wanted to talk to atevi, and he knew that, regardless of public posture, all but a handful of mostly-talk ideologues had no notion in the world of breaking off talk with atevi — again,
chimati sida'ta
. If Tabini moved fast, They had no choice but to deal with what was, and They still had to talk to Tabini through him, since Tabini wouldn't talk to Hanks, wouldn't talk to Wilson, or anybody else in the Department they could hasten through to promotion. By now, Hanks would have been dead, he greatly feared, if he hadn't specifically asked Tabini not to deal with the affront to his nation atevi-fashion; at any second violation of the Treaty he might not be able to argue Tabini out of a demonstration of atevi impatience with opposition to the paidhi they chose to deal with.

So if even temporarily the more pragmatic and politically savvy separatists in State should fall from grace and the true concrete-for-brains ideologues gain temporary ascendancy, he'd vastly regret the damage he'd have done the foresighted, loyal people at lower levels who backed him. But he had ultimate confidence the rabid ideologues would have short satisfaction, and shorter tenure, when they couldn't get information or cooperation — or raw materials — out of the mainland.

So even if they made their deals with the ship aloft, they were screwed —

And so was the ship, ultimately, until it dealt with atevi. He didn't like the position he was forced to. He didn't like the responsibility, but circumstances had assured he knew, and Mospheira didn't, and it was a position no conscientious diplomat ever wanted to be put into —

Because he
was
, dammit, trained to consult,
was
loyal to his nation if not the Department;
he
was following the course decades of paidhiin and advisory committees had mapped out, step by step, down to what technology could go in at what stages, and why.

Which made him, walking the lower corridor at Jago's side, realize three things: first, that he wasn't altogether alone in his resolve. No matter who was presently in charge of events back home or aloft, he had behind him all the structure and decision of all the past paidhiin-aijiin that had ever served, along with all their advisory committees — predecessors who were being betrayed by present expediency and the present administration.

Second, that to protect the situation they currently had, he had to get Hanks home quietly.

And, third, that he was really going to do it, really going to make a break with the Department as it was presently constituted. He would have to accelerate what his and Tabini's very wise predecessors had determined as the necessary rate of turnover of human technology to atevi far faster in its last stages than the planners had ever remotely envisioned as wise. He would have to push the world toward a more direct and more risky exposure of culture to culture than the exploratory Trade Cities proposal had ever remotely contemplated. The Trade Cities bill had been designed to educate the two populaces on an interpersonal, intercultural level; and to find out what the problems would be in an exposure which the best Foreign Office wisdom held as a very, very difficult interface.

That interface would be far more difficult in orbit — with two very set-in-their-ways cultures trying to adapt to a new environment as well as to each other, difficult even
if-
— and a big if — the crew of the ship up there didn't intend to double-cross the station-builders and station-workers one more time to fuel that ship and leave everyone betrayed and angry. The ship crew might think they could play the same game with new players.

They would think wrong.

If last night his speech before the legislature had provoked an assassination attempt, what he had formed as his intention now might bring out assassins in droves. If last night's speech had turned on every light in the presidential residence, tonight's work was going to keep them burning for weeks.

«
^
»

I
t wasn't
a matter of going out to the installation where the dish was: they would, Tabini's message had said, relay to Bu-javid systems, which meant anywhere convenient, and the meeting room was the same that Tabini had called him to the night he arrived.

Jago preceded him as he maneuvered his casted shoulder past the converse of aides at the door, into a meeting room crowded with technicians, communications equipment, and lords and representatives, two of the senior members of the print media, and a camera crew of uncertain but undoubtedly well-funded affiliation.

"Nand' paidhi," Tabini said, inviting him to the place of prominence, and Tabini's aides hastened to draw back his chair and settle him at Tabini's right, while Jago quietly set his notebook in front of him and his computer beside his chair. Technicians were making last-moment adjustments and set a microphone in front of him. He saw that it was switched off and cast a nervous look at the cameras. "Are they network, Tabini-ma?"

"Legislative," Tabini said. "We want meticulous records, not alone for posterity."

Preservative, he thought, of all their reputations, considering all the rumors that were bound to arise.

And useful in mistakes the paidhi might have to set straight. He felt more at ease with the cameras and the press under that understanding. He decided he wanted them there, rumor tending, as it did, to exaggerate every unaccustomed event. "Have we made technical contact yet?"

"The technicians are working on it. Everyone should understand —" A hush was rapidly settling in the room as lords and representatives strained to overhear them. "This entire evening's effort may be without result. But the contact between us and the ground station is clear. — Are we settled, then?"

There was a murmur from around the table as the last two members quickly assumed their chairs.

"Speak, nand' paidhi. We hope the ship will listen: your microphone will reach the operator at Mogari-nai."

"I'll do what I can, aiji-ma." He drew the mike closer, flipped the switch to On and felt his stomach uneasy. "Mogari-nai, this is Bren-paidhi. Do you hear?"

"Nand' paidhi, we can put you straight onto the dish."

Dreadful syntax. An assault on the language. The traditionalists objected to these enthusiastic technocrats. It likewise jarred the paidhi's nerves.

"Yes. Thank you, Mogari-nai. Am I going through now?"

"You're going through."

"
Phoenix-com
, this is Bren Cameron, translator for the atevi head of state based in Shejidan. The aiji of the Aishi'ditat has a message for the captains. Please acknowledge. —
nadiin-sai, machi arai'si na djima sa dimajin tasu
."

Keep playing that until further notice, that was.

He looked at Tabini. "I've asked the ship to answer, aiji-ma. No knowing whether there's a captain immediately available — there's probably more than one — or whether anyone's monitoring the radio. Sleep and waking hours up there aren't necessarily on —"

"
This is
Phoenix-com," came through the audio, in Mosphei' — or at least a dialect with origins common to his own. "
Do you read
?"

He'd felt reasonably steady a heartbeat ago. Now his very surroundings looked unreal to him. He moved the microphone closer, and his pulse seemed to shake his bones and preempt his breathing.

"I hear you quite clearly, sir. To whom am I speaking?" "
This is Robert Orr, watch officer. Please give your name and identification
."

"Mr. Orr, this is Bren Cameron, translator between humans and the Western Association — which
is
the largest nation and the only nation with which humanity has regular, treaty-bound contact. As a matter of protocol, as the translator, I can negotiate with you as a ship's officer. The person for whom I translate, on the other hand, the elected head of state of the Western Association, wishes to speak with the seniormost officer on the ship. This is a matter of protocol. The atevi head of state is present, well-disposed, and waiting to speak. Can you advise your senior captain and see if we can put him and the atevi head of state in direct contact during this conversation?"

"
Yes, sir. I'll inform him
." There was a little quaver of disturbance in the voice, a hasty, apparently afterthought: "
Stand by. Someone will be back to you in just a minute. Don't lose contact
."

"Thank you." He looked at Tabini. "Aiji-ma. I was speaking with a person of middle rank. I asked him to alert his highest authority. He wishes us to be patient; I believe he's gone in search of someone qualified."

There was absolute silence down the table, not the rustle of a paper.

"How do you judge the reply?"

"This is a respectful, proper answer to the proposition of someone of rank. They've every reason to deal sensibly, and to find someone —"

"Mr. Cameron."

A different voice.

"This is Stani Ramirez, senior captain. I understand you're speaking for a native government. Is this correct?"