Foreigner: (10th Anniversary Edition)

by C. J. Cherryh

  Not easy beasts to trap, he began to think. Not beasts that would go blindly into something wrong on the trail.

  But he began to be easier on that account. Malguri’s grounds weren’t, then, the sort of weed-grown, desolate place where enterprising assassins could just come and go at will. The very presence of the mecheiti would dissuade intruders.

  And one could legitimately believe, after all, that the power outage that still held in Malguri this morning was the legitimate result of a lightning strike, considering that power seemed to have gone out over a quarter of the township in the valley.

  Ilisidi had asked if he had slept through the disturbance—no, Ilisidi had called it a lively night, and asked whether he’d slept through it.

  Through what? Power failures? Or gunshots in the night, Tano’s nervous finger on the trigger, and Banichi on the radio?

  Neither Banichi nor Jago had clued him what to do, if they’d had any idea of the proposed morning hunt. Neither of them had forewarned him he might be asked … had trusted him as the paidhi, maybe. Or just not known.

  But Tabini, who doubtless knew the aiji-dowager as well as anyone in Shejidan, had said, regarding his dealings with Ilisidi—use your diplomacy.

  Ilisidi slowed and stopped ahead of him, where the trail began a downward pitch again.

  “From this place,” Ilisidi said, waving her hand to the view ahead, “you can see three provinces, Maidingi, Didaini, Taimani. How do you regard my land?”

  “Beautiful,” he said honestly.

  “My land, nand’ paidhi.”

  Nothing Ilisidi said was idle, or without calculation.

  “Your land, nai-ji. I confess I resisted being sent to Malguri. I thought it remote from my duties. I was mistaken. I wouldn’t have known about the dragonettes otherwise. I wouldn’t have ridden, in all my life.” In the moment, he agreed inside with what he was saying, enjoying his brief respite from Banichi, Jago, and sane responsibility, enjoying—the atevi attitude was contagious—his chance to push the restrictions under which the paidhi necessarily lived and conducted business. “But Banichi will kill me when I get back.”

  Ilisidi looked askance at him, and the corners of her mouth tightened.

  Literal atevi minds. “Figuratively speaking, nai-ji.”

  “You’re sure of my grandson.”

  Disquieting question. “Should I have doubt, nai-ji?” Ilisidi was certainly the one to ask, but one couldn’t trust the answer. No one knew Ilisidi’s man’chi, where it lay. She had never made it clear, at least that he knew, and, presumably, if Banichi or Jago knew, they would have told him.

  But no more did he know where Tabini’s was. That was always the way with aijiin—that they had none, or had none in reach of their subordinates.

  “Tabini’s a steady lad,” Ilisidi said. “Young. Very young. Tech solves everything.”

  A hint of her thoughts and her motives? He wasn’t sure. “Even the paidhi doesn’t maintain that to be the case, nai-ji.”

  “Doesn’t the Treaty forbid—I believe this was your insistence—interference in our affairs?”

  “That it does, nai-ji.” Dangerous ground. Very dangerous ground. Hell if this woman was as fragile as she looked. “Have I seemed to do contrary things? Please do me the kindness of telling me so.”

  “Does my grandson tell you so?”

  “If he told me I was interfering, I do swear to you, nai-ji, I would certainly reconsider my actions.”

  She said nothing for a space. It left him, riding beside her in the windy silence, to think anxiously whether anything he had said or done or supported in the various councils could be controversial, or as the dowager hinted, interfere in atevi affairs, or push technology too fast.

  “Please, aiji-ji. Be blunt. Am I opposing or advancing a position with which you disagree?”

  “What a strange question,” Ilisidi said. “Why should I tell you that?”

  “Because I would try to find out your reasons, nai-ji, not to oppose your interests, not to preempt your resources—but to avoid areas of your extreme interest. Let me recall to you, we don’t use assassins, nai-ji. That’s not even a resource for us.”

  “But they are, for atevi who may support you in your positions.”

  He’d heard that argument before. He could get around it with Tabini. He longed after Tabini’s company, he longed only to ask him, forthrightly to learn things … that no one else was telling him lately.

  And as now and again in the hours since he’d come to Malguri, he suffered another of those moments of dislocation—at one instant convinced that things were all right, and then, with no particular reason, doubting that, and recalling how completely he was isolated, more isolated than the paidhi had ever been from his resources.

  “Forgive my question,” he said to Ilisidi. “But the paidhi isn’t always wise enough to understand his position in your affairs. I hope for your good opinion, nai-ji.”

  “What do you hope to accomplish in your tenure?”

  He hadn’t expected that question. But he’d answered it, repeatedly, in councils. “An advancement for atevi and humans, nai-ji. An advancement, a step toward technological equality, at a pace which won’t do harm.”

  “That’s a given, isn’t it? By the Treaty, a dull and tedious given. Be less modest. Name the specific, wondrous thing you’d have done before you die … the gift you wish most, in your great wisdom, to bestow on us.”

  He didn’t think it a harmless question. He could name certain things. He honestly didn’t have a clear answer.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “What, the paidhi without a notion what he wishes to do?”

  “A step at a time, nai-ji. I don’t know what may be possible. And telling you … would in itself violate the principles …”

  “The most ambitious thing you’ve ever advanced.”

  “The rail system.”

  “Pish. We invented the rail. You improved it.”

  That was true, though atevi trains and steamships had been only the most rudimentary design, and boilers had burst with frightening regularity.

  “So what more, paidhi? Rockets to the moons? Travel amongst the stars?”

  A far more dangerous topic. “I’d like, yes, to see atevi at least reach that threshold in my lifetime. Nai-ji, so much is possible from there. So much you could do then. But we aren’t sure of the changes that would make, and I want to understand what would result. I want to give good advice. That’s my job, nai-ji.” He had never himself seen it so clearly, until now. “We’re at the edge of space. And so much changes once you can look down on the world.”

  “What changes?”

  One more dangerous question, this one cultural and philosophical. He looked outward, at the lake, the whole world seeming to lie below the path they rode.

  “Height changes your perspective, nai-ji. We see three provinces from here. But my eye can’t see the treaty-boundaries.”

  “Mine can. That mountain ridge. The river. They’re quite evident.”

  “But were this mountain as high as the great moon, nai-ji, and if were you born on this very high mountain, would you see the lines? Or, if you saw them, would they mean to you what they mean to people born on the plain, these distant, invisible lines?”

  “Man’chi is man’chi. Man’chi is important. And to a dweller on the border—what meaning, these lines aijiin agree on? Man’chi is never visible.”

  It was gratifying to expect the answer one got, the same that Tabini inevitably gave. It was gratifying to think one did accurately forecast atevi sentiments. It was useful to know about Ilisidi.

  “So that wouldn’t change,” he said. “Even if you stood on the highest mountain.”

  “Man’chi would never change,” Ilisidi said.

  “Even if you left the sight of the world for years and years.”

  “In hell and on earth, man’chi would not change. But you don’t understand this, you humans.” Babs struck a slight rise, and fo
r a moment walked solitary, until Nokhada caught up. Ilisidi-dowager said, “Or you never tell your enemies, if you do change.”

  That, too, was in the machimi plays. The catastrophic event, the overturning of a life’s understandings. But always toward the truth, as he saw it. Always toward what man’chi should have been.

  Ilisidi offered no explanation of her remark. Perhaps he was supposed to have asked something wise. But imagination failed him.

  “We truthfully didn’t understand your view of things, nai-ji, when we first arrived. We didn’t understand atevi. You didn’t understand us. That’s one of the great and unfortunate reasons of the War.”

  “The unfortunate reason of the War was humans taking Mospheira, to which they had no right. It was hundreds of thousands of atevi dislodged from their homes. It was man’chi broken, because we couldn’t deal with your weapons, nand’ paidhi.” The dowager’s voice wasn’t angry, only severe, and emphatic. “And slowly you raise us up to have technology, and more technology. Does this not seem a foolish thing to do?”

  Not the first time he’d met that question, either. Atevi asked it among themselves, when they thought the paidhi would hear no report of their discussion. Thwarted councilors shouted it at the paidhi in council. Not even to Tabini could he give the untranslatable, the true answer: We thought we could make you our friends.

  So he gave the official, the carefully worked out, translatable reply: “We saw association possible. We saw advantage to us in your good will in this region where fortune had cast us.”

  “You tell us whether we shall have roads, or rail. You deny us what pleases you to deny. You promise us wonders. But the great wonders, as I hear, are on Mospheira, for the enjoyment of humans, who have paved roads.”

  “A very few. Fewer than you have.”

  “On a continent a thousand times the size of Mospheira. Be honest, nand’ paidhi.”

  “With vehicles that don’t use internal combustion. Which will come, nai-ji, which will come to atevi.”

  “In your lifetime … or in mine?”

  “Perhaps in thirty years. Perhaps less. Depending on whether we have the necessary industry. Depending on finding resources. Depending on the associations and the provinces finding it politic to cooperate in producing scarce items, in depending on computers. Depending on man’chi, and who’s willing and not willing to work together, and how successful the first programs are … but I needn’t tell that to the aiji-dowager, who knows the obstinacy of vested interests.”

  He had made the dowager laugh, if briefly and darkly. The sun cast Ilisidi’s black profile in shadow against the hazy distances of the sky and the lake. They rode a while in silence, there on the crest of the mountain, with the wind picking up the mecheiti’s manes and himself rocking, child-sized, on the back of a creature bred to carry atevi into their infrequent and terrible wars.

  “There’s the airport,” Ilisidi said, pointing ahead of them.

  Straining his eyes, he could make out what he thought was Maidingi Airport, beside a hazy sprawl he decided must be Maidingi township. Nearer at hand, he could just make out the road, or what he took for it, wending down the mountain.

  “Is that the town?” he asked, knowing it was a stupid question, but only to break the silence; and Ilisidi said it was Maidingi.

  After that, looking out over the broad plain, Ilisidi pointed out the direction of villages outlying Maidingi township, and told him the names of plants and regions and the mountains across the lake.

  But in his mind was the history he had seen in the books in his room, the castle standing against attack from the Association across the lake, even before cannon had come into the question. Malguri had stood for centuries against intrusion from the east. Banners flying, smoke of cannon on the walls.…

  Don’t romanticize, his predecessor had told him. Don’t imagine. See and observe and report.

  Accuracy. Not wishful thinking.

  Lives relied on the paidhi’s accuracy. Billions of lives relied on the truth of his perception.

  And relied equally on his representing both sides accurately to each other.

  But, he thought, how much have we forgotten about them? How much have we encouraged them to lose? How much have we overridden, imposing our priorities and our technological sequence over theirs?

  Or are those possibilities really forgotten here? Have they ever wholly been forgotten?

  They rode to the very end of the ridge. Clouds were rolling in over the southern end of the lake, dark gray beneath, flashing with lightnings, brooding over slate-gray waters. But sunlight slanted over the blue peaks to the east, turning the water along the Malguri shore as bright as polished silver. A dragonette leapt from its nest among the rocks, crying protest to the winds, and thunder rumbled, Another dragonette was creeping back up the mountain the long, slow way they must, once they’d flown, wings folded, wing-claws finding purchase on the steep rocks.

  Dragonettes existed in Shejidan. Buildings near the park had slanted walls, he’d heard, specifically to afford them purchase. Atevi still valued them, for their stubbornness, for their insistence on flying, when they knew the way back was uncertain and fraught with dangers.

  Predator on the wing and potential prey on the return.

  Ilisidi turned Babs about on the end of the trail, and took a downward, slanting course among the rocks. He followed.

  In a time more of riding, they passed an old and ruined building Cenedi said was an artillery installation from a provincial dispute. But its foundations, Cenedi said, had been older than that, as a fortress called Tadiiri, the Sister, once bristling with cannon.

  “How did it go to ruins?” he asked.

  “A falling out with Malguri,” Cenedi said. “And a barrel of wine that didn’t agree with the aiji of Tadiiri or his court.”

  Poison. “But the whole fortress?” he blurted out.

  “It lacked finesse,” Cenedi said.

  So he knew of a certainty then what Cenedi was, the same as Banichi and Jago. And he believed now absolutely that his near demise had embarrassed Cenedi, as Cenedi had said, professionally.

  “After that,” Cenedi said, “Tadiiri was demolished, its cannon taken down. You saw them at the front entrance, as you drove in.”

  He had not even been sure they were authentic. A memorial, he had thought. He didn’t know such things. But the age of wars and cannon had been so brief—and war on the earth of the atevi so seldom a matter of engagement, almost always of maneuver, and betrayal, with leaders guarded by their armies. It was assassination one most had to guard against, on whatever scale.

  And here he rode with Ilisidi, and her guard, leaving the one Tabini had lent him.

  Or was it, in atevi terms, a maneuver, a posturing, a declaration of position and power, their forcing him to join them? He might have found something else unhealthful to drink, or eat. There were so many hazards a human could meet, if they meant him harm.

  And Banichi and Cenedi did speak, and did intrude into each other’s territory—Banichi had been angry at him for accepting the invitation, Banichi had said there was no way to retrieve him from his promise—but all of it was for atevi reasons, atevi dealing with a situation between Tabini and his grandmother, at the least, and maybe a trial of Banichi’s authority in the house: he simply couldn’t read it.

  Maybe Ilisidi and Tabini had made their point and maybe, hereafter, he could hope for peace between the two wings of the house—Tabini’s house, Tabini’s politics with generations before him, and paidhiin before himself.

  Diplomacy, indeed, he thought, falling back to Babs’ tail again, in his place and deftly advised of it.

  He understood who ruled in Malguri. He had certainly gotten that clear and strong. He supposed, through Banichi, that Tabini had.

  But in the same way he supposed himself a little safer now, inside Ilisidi’s guardianship as well as Tabini’s.

  VII

  In a courtyard echoing with shouts and the squeals of mec
heiti, Nokhada extended a leg at his third request, mostly, Bren thought, because the last but her had already done the same.

  He slithered down Nokhada’s sun-warmed side, and viewed with mistrust the mecheita’s bending her neck around and nibbling his sleeve, butting capped but still formidable tusks into his side as he tried to straighten the twisted rein. But he wasn’t so foolish as to press on Nokhada’s nose again, and Nokhada lifted her head, sniffing the air, a black mountain between him and the mid-morning sun, complaining at something unseen—or only liking the echoes of her own voice.

  The handlers moved in to take the rein. He gave Nokhada a dismissing pat on the shoulder, figuring that was due. Nokhada made a rumbling sound, and ripped the rein from his hand, following the rest of the group the handlers were leading away into the maze of courtyards.

  “Use her while you’re here,” Ilisidi said, near him. “At any time, at any hour. The stables have their instructions to accommodate the paidhi-aiji.”

  “The dowager is very kind,” he said, wondering if there was skin left on his palm.

  “Your seat is still doubtful,” she said, took her cane from an attendant and walked off toward the steps.

  He took that for a dismissal.

  But she stopped at the first step and looked back, leaning with both hands on her cane. “Tomorrow morning. Breakfast.” The cane stabbed the air between them. “No argument, nand’ paidhi. This is your host’s privilege.”

  He bowed and followed Ilisidi up the steps in the general upward flow of her servants and her security, who probably overlapped such functions, like his own.

  His lip was swollen, he had lost the outer layer of skin on his right hand, intimate regions of his person were sore and promising to get sorer, and by the dowager’s declaration, he was to come back for a second try tomorrow, a situation into which he seemed to have opened a door that couldn’t be shut again.

  He followed all the way up the steps to the balcony of Ilisidi’s apartment, that being the only way up into the castle he knew, while the dowager, on her way into her inner apartments, paid not the least further attention to his being there—which was not the rudeness it would have been among humans: it only meant the aiji-dowager was disinterested to pursue business further with an inferior. At their disparity of rank she owed him nothing; and in that silence, he was free to go, unless some servant should deliver him some instruction to the contrary.