Invader: Book Two of Foreigner

by C. J. Cherryh

  Cenedi had said there were people trying to file Intent on the paidhi. Which gave no idea on exactly what issue was involved or whether the paidhi was surrogate for Tabini in the atevi politics of assassins and intrigue.

  He resolved at least that he was going to take the advice of the security Tabini had provided him, and meant to take no chances with his personal safety.

  The bright spot in the entire day thus far was an unexpected ring of the phone from Bu-javid Security, reporting that Tano’s wayward partner was actually downstairs in the Bu-javid subway station, and that, lacking specific instruction, Security was double-checking Algini’s assignment to the sensitive Bu-javid third floor and questioning a “considerable amount of baggage.” That assignment and the baggage apparently needed someone’s authorization, and in the absence of Banichi and Jago, Tano evidently not being qualified to recognize his own partner, it had to go all the way up to Tabini himself.

  Which Tabini, called out of yet one more committee meeting, was patiently willing to do for the paidhi—resulting, within the hour, in Algini’s entry into the foyer with an amazing accompaniment of baggage, a towering pile of responsibility which had Saidin and the household servants whispering together in urgent dismay, as strong Bu-javid security personnel delivered stack after stack of baggage belonging to a broad-shouldered ateva with bandages and plaster patches glaring white on his skin, not in uniform, but in clothes more appropriate for a hike through the hills—small wonder Security downstairs had blinked.

  Tano himself was so glad to see his partner that he actually patted Algini on the shoulder—not, Bren sternly reminded himself, that Tano felt the way he would under similar circumstances.

  But—but—and but. It was another tantalizing pass of that camaraderie that atevi did have, that Jago and Banichi he would swear had given him: more warmth in all than Tabini was wont to show, although—one had to remind oneself—in assessing atevi emotion, one might be dealing with individual differences.

  But he found himself watching Tano and Algini with a certain tightness about the throat and thinking he almost had something like that with Banichi and Jago, whatever it was and whatever it felt like; a level of feeling that at least let a man believe his back was defended under all circumstances and that he wasn’t come hell and high water alone in the universe—more emotional attachment of whatever kind and more loyalty than he’d had from humans he could name. More dangerous thoughts, around other humanly, emotionally charged words. He was not doing well today.

  That, after his session with Tabini, calmly laying out for Tabini what he’d heard, what he suspected, what he thought were the only available human choices—in short, treason, of a virtually unprecedented kind so far as the history of the paidhiin. The act had hit a particularly sensitive spot in his nerves, with, in all that trying session, Tabini never showing any emotion but somber thought or amusement, never thanking him or reassuring him of the peaceful, constructive, wise uses to which the information he’d given would be put.

  He found himself with very raw, very abraded sensitivities this afternoon, wanting not to feel as alone as he felt, and here Tano and Algini held that lure out in front of him, a demonstration that, yes, there was feeling, yes, it was almost—almost—what a human could access. He’d touched it. He’d tasted it. He’d relied on it for life and sanity in Malguri, and it might be all he could damn well look to for the rest of his life, thanks to choices he was making in these few desperate days.

  And it wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t reliable emotion. He could play voyeur to the experience of it; he was glad it existed for them. He was very glad for Algini’s safety.

  And perhaps that was the cold, sensible, atevi thing to feel right now. Perhaps it was all Tabini, for instance, would feel, or that Jago and Banichi would feel, if they were here.

  Algini came to him and bowed with a pleasant, even cheerful face, unusual on glum Algini, and declared proudly, “I brought your baggage, nand’ paidhi.”

  My God, was that the contents of the pasteboard boxes and cases piled on the antique carpets? All the things he’d left behind in Malguri, literally all he owned in the world, except a few keepsakes he’d left with his mother. He’d thought there was a remote chance of getting some things back, in the regret of a favorite sweater, his best coat, his brush, his traveling kit, the photos of his family—that was his whole damned life sitting in those boxes, and Algini had just brought it back, from his shirts and socks to the rings and the watch that Barb had given him.

  “Nadi-ji,” he said to Algini. The vocabulary of atevi gratitude was linguistic quicksand. “—I’m very surprised.” He still wasn’t hitting it. “Much as I value these things, I’d give them all to have you safe. It’s very good, very dutiful, very—considerate of you to have brought them.”

  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 salutatio
ns 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 reenter 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 ascendency, 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.

  10

  It 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?”