Foreigner: (10th Anniversary Edition)

by C. J. Cherryh

  The interview still bothered him. He still worried over what he’d said, or what expression he’d had, when atevi didn’t show expression … and he wasn’t used to television cameras and talking to glaring lights. …

  Thunder crashed. The lights flickered. And went out.

  Incredible. He cast a baleful look at the dimmed ceiling, in which the bulb was out.

  But he refused, this time, to be inconvenienced. Hot water didn’t become unhot instantly. The candles were still in the sconce. He got out in the warm air, took a candle from the candelabrum on the table, lit it from the boiler flame, and with the one candle, lit the candles in the sconce. He heard the servants shouting at each other down the hall, not panicked, except perhaps the cook, who probably had reason, at this hour. But come lightning, come storm, Malguri managed.

  He settled back into the hot water, complacent and competent in his atevi past—the paidhi having learned the world didn’t stop when the power failed. He sipped his iced drink, and went back to the contemplation of safety ski bindings, buyer’s choice, black, white, or glowing green.

  Hurried footsteps arrived from the accommodation. He looked up as a flashlight beam flared into his eyes, with a black, metal-sparked figure behind it.

  “Bren-ji?” Jago asked. “Our apologies. It’s general, I’m afraid. Are you all right?”

  “Perfectly fine,” he said. “—Do you mean to tell me that that piece of equipment they just freighted in and installed—just went out?”

  “We truly don’t know, at this point. We suspect the first incident was arranged. We’re investigating this one. Please stay put.”

  Away went the sense of security. The thought of intruders in the halls, while he was sitting in the bath—was not comfortable. “I’m getting out.”

  “I’m going to be here,” Jago said. “You don’t have to, nadi-ji.”

  “I’d rather. It’s fine. I was just going to read.”

  “I’ll be in the reception room. I’ll tell Djinana.”

  Jago left. He climbed out and dressed by candlelight, took a candle with him, but someone had already lit the lamps in the bedroom and in the sitting room.

  Rain spattered the sitting room windows, a gray sameness that began to seem natural. He felt sorry for Banichi—who was probably out in that. Sorry, and worried for his safety. He didn’t understand how someone faked a lightning strike, or what they could have found out that changed things.

  He walked into the reception room, found Jago standing in front of the window, the clouded light making a mask of her profile and glittering on her uniform. She was staring out at the lake, or at the featureless sky.

  “They wouldn’t try the same thing again,” he said. “They can’t be that crazy.”

  Jago looked at him—gave a small, strange laugh. “Perhaps that makes them clever. They expect us not to take it for granted.”

  “They?”

  “Or he or she. One doesn’t know, nadi. We’re trying to find out.”

  Don’t bother me, he decided that meant. He stood and looked out the window, which gave him nothing at all.

  “Go read if you like,” Jago said.

  As if the mind could leap, that quickly, back to ski catalogs. His damned well couldn’t. It didn’t like informational voids; it didn’t like silent guards lurking in his reception room, or the chance there was a reason to need them, possibly slipping up the stairs outside.

  Read, hell. He wanted a window that overlooked something but gray.

  He hadn’t the disposition, he decided. He was far too nervous.

  “Nadi Bren. Come away from the window.”

  He didn’t think about such things. He was chagrined, to be caught twice, shook his head and walked back—

  Jago was staring at him with disturbing worry—set to shepherd a fool, he supposed, who walked in front of windows. “Sorry,” he said.

  “Think as one thinks trying to reach you,” she said. “Do them no favors. Go, sit, relax.”

  Guild assassin, Banichi had said. Someone Banichi knew. Socialized with.

  And didn’t yet know why a man had broken the rules?

  “Jago,—how does a person get a license?”

  “To do what, Bren-ji?”

  “You know. The Guild.” He wanted not to tread on sensibilities with Jago. He was sorry he’d wandered into the territory.

  “To be licensed to the Guild? One elects. One chooses.”

  It told him no more than before, what pushed a sane person in that direction. Jago didn’t seem the type—if there was a type to the profession.

  “Bren-ji. Why do you ask?”

  “Wondering—what sort of person is after me.”

  Jago seemed to ignore his question then, looking off to the window. Into rain-spatter and nothing.

  “We’re not one kind, Bren-ji. We’re not one face.”

  None of your business, he supposed. “Nadi,” he said, departing, willing to leave her to her own thoughts, if he could only shake his own.

  “What sort becomes paidhi?” she asked him, before he could take a second step.

  Good question, he thought. Solid hit. He had to think about it, and didn’t find the answer he’d used to have … couldn’t even locate the boy who’d started down that track, couldn’t believe in him, even marginally.

  “A fool, probably.”

  “One doubts, nadi-ji. Is that a requirement?”

  “I think so.”

  “So … how do you vie for this honor? In what foolishness?”

  “Curiosity. Wanting to know more than Mospheira. Doing good to the planet we’re on, the people we live next to.”

  “Is this also Wilson?”

  Dead hit. What could he say?

  “You,” Jago said, “do not act like Wilson-paidhi.”

  “Valasi-aiji,” he countered, “wasn’t Tabini, either.”

  “True,” Jago said. “Very true.”

  “Jago, I—” He was up against that word, which only governed salad courses. He shook his head and started to walk away.

  “Bren-ji. Please finish.”

  He didn’t want to talk. He wasn’t sure of his rationality, let alone his self-control. But Jago waited.

  “Jago-ji, I’ve worked all my life, best I can do. I don’t know what else I can do. Now we’ve lost the lights again. I don’t think I’ve deserved this. But I ask myself, nadi, is it my fault, have I gone too far and too fast, have I done Tabini harm by trying to help him, and is someone that damned persistent in trying to kill me? Why, Jago? Do you have the remotest notion?”

  “You bring change,” Jago said. “To some, this is frightening.”

  “The damned railroad?” The emphasis of the interview bewildered him. Jago was all but a shadow to him, expressionless, unreachable. He made a frustrated dismissal with his hand and walked away toward the sitting room, only to gain a space to think, to sit down and read and take his mind off the day’s bizarre turn, maybe before supper, which she might share, if no one poisoned the cook.

  But he stopped again, fearing he might insult her. “If someday,” he said, “this television business ever works out to bring news crews onto Mospheira, I’ll ask for you and Banichi to come visit my family. I’d like you to see what we are. I’d like you to know us, nadi-ji.”

  “I’d be most honored,” Jago said solemnly.

  So perhaps he’d patched things. He walked away into the sitting room and threw another piece of wood onto the fire, while thunder echoed off the walls. Jago had followed him in, evidently conceiving that as what he wanted, but she said nothing, only took up looking through the sitting room library shelves instead.

  There was no interfering with Jago’s notions of duty, or what she might conceive as being sociable. He took up his book, began to sit down.

  The lights came on again.

  He looked up, frustrated, at the ceiling fixtures.

  “It must have been a fuse,” Jago said, from across the room. “That’s good.”

&
nbsp; He recalled dusty old wires running beside bare natural gas pipes, along the hall ceiling, and envisioned the whole apartment going up in an electrical disaster. “Malguri needs a new electrical system,” he muttered. “Where do they have that gas tank?”

  “What gas?”

  “Methane.”

  “In the cellar,” Jago said.

  “Under the building. It’s a damned bomb, nadi. The place needs electric furnaces. If they’ve installed electric lights, surely electric furnaces can’t hurt.”

  “Funding,” Jago said.

  “While they’re looking for assassins—do they watch that tank?”

  “Every access to this building,” Jago said, “is under surveillance.”

  “Except when the power’s out.”

  Jago made a small shrug.

  “Those windows,” he said, “aren’t watched. I found that out last night, when the power came back on.”

  Jago frowned, went close to the window, and ran a finger around the edge of the casement, looked up and around—at what, he couldn’t see.

  “How did you find out, Bren-ji?”

  “I opened a window to look out. The power came back on. The alarm went off. I take it that’s an old system.”

  “It certainly is,” Jago said. “Did you report this?”

  “It woke the whole staff.”

  Jago didn’t look happier, but what she saw, examining the window, he couldn’t tell.

  “Except Banichi,” he said.

  “Except Banichi.”

  “I don’t know where he was. I told you. We had an argument. He went off somewhere.” He had an entirely unwelcome thought but kept his mouth shut on it, watched while Jago walked to the door, pulled it half-shut, and looked at the wall behind it, still frowning. Security didn’t talk about security. He doubted an explanation was forthcoming.

  “Nadi Jago,” he said. “Banichi wasn’t here. Do you have any notion where he was last night?”

  He might have remarked it was raining outside. Jago’s expression never varied. She opened the door again to its ordinary position, walked out and into the reception room.

  The lights went out again. He looked up in frustration, then followed her into the other room to protest the silence and the confusion of his security. She was at the window. She unlatched the side panel, opened it and shut it again, without an alarm.

  “What in hell’s going on, Jago?”

  Jago took out her pocket-com and thumbed it on, rattled off a string of code he didn’t understand.

  Banichi answered. He was relatively certain it was Banichi’s voice. And Jago’s stance showed some small reassurance. She answered, and cut the com off, and put it away.

  “It did register,” she said. “Our system registered.”

  “Yours and Banichi’s?” he asked—but the com beeped and Jago thumbed it on again and answered it, frowning.

  Banichi’s voice replied. Jago’s frown deepened. She answered Banichi shortly, a sign-off, clipped the com to her belt and headed for the door.

  “What was that?” he asked. “What’s happening? Jago?”

  She crossed back in two strides, seized his shoulders and looked down at him. “Bren-ji. I’ve never betrayed you. I will not, Bren-ji.”

  After which she was out the hall door at the same pace. She shut it. Hard.

  Jago? he thought. His shoulders still felt the force of her fingers. And her footsteps were fading at a rapid pace down the hall outside, while he stood there asking himself where Banichi had been last night when he’d set the alarm off.

  If there was another system—Banichi had known about him opening that window, if Banichi had been monitoring it. And for whatever reason—Banichi hadn’t come back when the general alarm went.

  Maybe because Banichi had already discounted it as a threat. But that wasn’t the Banichi he knew, to take something like that for granted.

  It was craziness, from breakfast with the dowager to the television crew arriving in the middle of a security so tight he couldn’t get a telephone. He didn’t like the feeling he was having. He didn’t like the reasons that might make Jago go running out of here, saying, in a language that didn’t have a definite word for trust—trust me to take care of you.

  He double-checked the window latch. What kind of person could get in on the upper floor overlooking a sheer drop, he didn’t know, but he didn’t want to find out. He checked the outer door lock, although he’d heard it click.

  But what good that was when everyone on staff had keys to the back hall of this place—

  He had a sudden and anxious thought, went straight to his bedroom and, on his knees by the bed, reached under the mattress.

  The gun Banichi had given him … wasn’t there.

  He searched, thinking that the Malguri staff, making the bed, might have shifted it without knowing it was there. He lifted the mattress to be sure—found nothing; no gun, no ammunition.

  He let the mattress back down and arranged the bedclothes and the furs—sat down then, on the edge of the bed, trying to keep panic at arm’s length, reasoning with himself that he had as much time to discover the gun missing as they thought it might take him, before they grew anxious; and if they hadn’t devised visual surveillance in the rooms he didn’t know about, whoever had taken it didn’t know yet that he’d discovered the fact.

  Fact: someone had it. Someone was armed with it, more to the point, who might or might not ordinarily have access to that issue pistol, or its caliber of ammunition. It was Banichi’s—and if Banichi hadn’t taken it himself, then somebody had a gun with an identification and a distinctive marking on its bullets that could report it right back to Banichi’s commander in the Bu-javid.

  No matter what it was used for.

  If Banichi didn’t know what had happened—Banichi needed to know it was gone—and he didn’t have a phone, a pocket-com, or any way he knew to get one, except to walk out the door, go violate some security perimeter and hope it was Banichi who answered the alarm.

  Which was the plan he had. Not the most discreet way to attract attention.

  But, again, so long as he called no one’s bluff—things might stay quiet until Banichi or Jago got back. The missing gun wasn’t a thing to bring to the staff’s attention. He could probably trust Tano and Algini, who’d come with them from Shejidan—but he didn’t know that.

  He was rattled. He was tired, after an uneasy night and a nerve-wracking afternoon. He wasn’t, perhaps, making his best decisions—wasn’t up to cleverness, without knowing more than he did.

  His nerves twitched to distant thunder—that also was how tired he was. He could go try to trip alarms—but Banichi and Jago were out in the rain, chasing someone, or worse, chasing someone inside the house. His imagination pictured a tank of methane sitting in the basement, someone with explosives—

  But they mustn’t deface Malguri. Atevi wouldn’t take that route. Mishidi. Awkward. Messy. No biichi-ji.

  So they wouldn’t explode the place. If anything happened, and a bullet turned up where it shouldn’t, with marks that could trace it to Banichi, he could swear to what had really happened.

  Unless he was the corpse in question.

  Not a good time to go walking the halls, he decided, or startling his own security, who thought they knew where he was. He’d planned to spend the afternoon reading. He found he had no better or wiser plans. He got his dressing gown for a little extra warmth, went back to the sitting-room fire and picked up his book, back in the histories of Malguri.

  About atevi. And loyalty. And expectations that didn’t work out.

  Expectations on his side, too—about feelings that just weren’t there. Flat weren’t there, and no use—no possibility—of changing anything to do with biology. What could one do? Pour human hormones into atevi bloodstreams, crosswire atevi brains to send impulses atevi brains didn’t have?

  And ask how humans had to fail atevi expectations, at what emotional level. There had to be an emotional leve
l.

  No. There didn’t have to be. Terracentric thinking again. There was nothing in the laws of the universe that said what let atevi achieve a very respectable society on their own had to have human attributes, or respond when humans tried to attach to them in human ways. In a reasonable universe, it didn’t have to happen; more, in a reasonable universe, it was more reasonable for atevi locomotives to resemble human-built locomotives than for atevi to resemble humans psychologically. Locomotives, designed by whatever species, had tracks for easy rolling, shafts to drive the wheels, steam or diesel, and gears to power the shafts, and a pipe to vent the smoke—that was physics. Airplanes flying through an equal density of air wouldn’t tend to look like locomotives. Rockets wouldn’t resemble refrigerators. Physics had its constraints for machines and structures with one job to do, and physics on old Earth and physics on the earth of the atevi wasn’t a smidge different.

  But biology, for intelligent beings with a whole damned lot of jobs to do, with microenvironments, evolutionary pressures, and genetic baroque sifted into the mix—had one hell of a lot of variables in potential makeup.

  Not anybody’s fault. Not anybody’s fault they’d come to this star—wormhole, discontinuity of some kind—the physics people had their theories, but no human could prove the cause from where they sat, which was on the far side of God-knew-what galactic disk, for all they knew: no spectrum matched Sol or its neighbors, the pulsars, which the physicists said could peg their location … hadn’t.

  They hadn’t known where they were then, and they didn’t know now—as if where they were had any absolute referent when they didn’t know how long it had taken them to get there: hundreds of years in subspace, for all anyone knew—stuck here, able to cobble the station together—

  But it was a long, slow haul to the star’s frozen debris belt and back to the life-zone, where they’d built the station: that, the way he’d understood it, had been the real politics, whether to build in the life-zone or at the edge of it; and the life-zone had won out, even knowing it was around a living world, even knowing someday it was going to mean admitting they were making a dangerous choice on very little data. …