Invader

by C. J. Cherryh

  The fact was—he knew far less about Phoenix than he knew about atevi; he knew Phoenix’s present attitudes, inclinations and crew list less than he knew the geography of the moon. He didn’t know what Phoenix meant, or intended, or threatened.

  He didn’t know the capabilities of the ship, whether it had traveled at FTL speeds or—considering the length of time it had been gone—sublight, which seemed a possibility.

  But, ominously, the dialogue between ship and ground-station had gone from massively informative and high-level in the initial moments to, finally, the converse of under-secretaries and ship’s officers niggling their way through questions neither side was willing to bring anybody to the microphone to answer.

  What was the state of affairs, the ship asked, between Mospheira and the world’s native population?

  Mospheira wasn’t answering that question. The State Department, the same close-mouthed upper echelon that backed Deana Hanks, was advising the President on an entity it didn’t know a damned thing about; and the executive once it got involved was used to having weeks, months, even years and decades to study and debate a problem.

  Mospheira didn’t have or want rapid change. The social and technological dynamics meant what was, would be, foreseeably, for fifty, a hundred years, and its planning was always well in advance, a simple steerage of the world at large, atevi and human, toward matching technological bases, toward goals decades away. And if the executive got off its butt and moved—the sub-offices through which governmental communications ran weren’t geared to decide faster than they did.

  And if the ship knew what it wanted and pushed …

  He listened, as back the two sides came to another foot-dragging exchange of minor ship officers demanding station records which they thought Mospheira should have; and after a day and a half, by the time markers, another exchange demanding in turn where the ship had been for two hundred years.

  Damn again, Bren thought, hearing Phoenix ignore the question and then hail the world at large, wondering if anyone else down there was listening.

  Phoenix was trying to make contact on its own. Thank God nobody in the atevi world understood enough to fire back an answer and begin a dialogue. Thank God the Treaty provided the paidhi at least as a unified contact point. Phoenix was unknowingly charting a very dangerous course.

  After that the ship broke off transmissions for what seemed a long time, and atevi date notations on the tape confirmed it. The ship asked no questions and ominously provided not one answer, not one clue to the President’s persistent questions: Where have you been? Why have you come back? What do you want here now?

  Mospheira had revealed a great deal to the incomers—necessarily, with the whole planet spread out for the orbiting ship to see—a tapestry of railroads and lighted towns and cities and airports, the same on one side of the strait as on the other, which had not at all been the case when the ship left. And he knew what the ship’s optics were capable of seeing, at least the equal of what Mospheira had been able to see through the failing eyes of the station—hype that several times, for what a ship with undamaged optics could pick up.

  And there was no way to see inside the ship or the station.

  While Mospheira had, he mused, knuckle pressed against his lips, revealed more in its questions than it might realize, too, certainly to him. He knew the Department, he knew the executive, he knew personalities—the ship didn’t, unless it discovered old patterns, but, damn, he could almost detect the fingerprints on the questions, the responses, the attitudes. It was Jules Erton, senior Policy; it was Claudia Swynton—it was the President’s Chief of Staff, George Barrulin: the President didn’t have opinions until George told him what he thought.

  The records became contemporaneous. Mospheira talked. The ship continued its efforts at contacting population centers, Shejidan in particular. There hadn’t been contact between the ship and Mospheira for two days. The ship was not currently answering questions from Mospheira about its business or its activities.

  The cold that had started with his arm had spread to a general shivery unease and left him wishing—which he never thought in his life he would wish—that he could pick up the phone, call Deana Hanks, and say, amicably, sanely, Look, Deana, differences aside—we have a problem.

  Which was not, damn the woman, a comfortable proposition. The rift was not a resolvable rift between two people, it was ideological, between two political philosophies on Mospheira. The camp he feared now had thrown Deana Hanks onto the mainland was the same that had supported Hanks through the selection process no matter her test scores, and he suspected foreknowledge of key questions she still hadn’t answered with as high a score as his, as well as outside help on the requisite paper. She was Raymond Gaylord Hanks’ granddaughter, and S. Gaylord Hanks’ daughter, that was old, old politics, a conservative element that had, ever since the war, argued that Shejidan was secretly hostile—the same damned suspicion among humans that, mirror-image among atevi, believed in death rays on the station, maintained that the atevi space program got atevi funding because, along with getting into space, atevi meant to take the station and use it as a base to deny access for Mospheira.

  The fixation of the conservatives lately was the snowballing advances in technology during his and Wilson’s tenure, both technological and social: the conservatives held that Tabini was hostile and using a naive paidhi for his own purposes.

  That very conservative camp of human interests moldered away, not in obscure university posts, but in the halls of the presidency, the legislature: they were the old guard politicians, whose families had been in politics since the war, in an island community where politics had traditionally not mattered a damn in ordinary human affairs and nepotism got more immediate results.

  In the State Department, most of the view-with-alarmers were at senior levels, entrenched in lifelong tenancies: they had never, ever accepted the official atevi assertion that Tabini was innocent of his father’s assassination. It was a tenet of the conservative faith that Tabini had done it, and that Tabini had demanded Wilson-paidhi resign to get a new and naive paidhi to carry out his programs.

  In brutal atevi fact, they were very probably right, granted Tabini’s grandmother hadn’t beaten him to it—but parricide didn’t weigh the same on the mainland as it did on Mospheira. One just couldn’t judge atevi by human ethics. Assassinate someone of the same man’chi, the same hierarchical loyalty? That was shocking.

  Assassinate a relative? That was possibly a rational solution.

  The damn trouble was—the paidhi had far better pipelines and mechanisms for dispensing new information into the atevi mainland than he had for moving public opinion on Mospheira. It had never been necessary before for the paidhi to convince Mospheirans. It had never been necessary before for the paidhi to campaign against the conservatives, because the conservatives had never had a crisis in which they could move members of academe, as he feared they had done, to interfere in the paidhi’s office.

  But the academic insulation that supported the paidhi and assisted in the decision-making—usually without the politicians involved in the process—was a politically naive group of people, who, confronted with panic, might have been rushed to put Hanks in a position where she could at least observe at a time when lack of information seemed very ominous.

  He’d never taken Hanks seriously. He’d taken for granted that she’d drown quietly in academe and be so old if she ever got the appointment she’d likely decline it, immersed lifelong in Mospheiran ways and incapable of adjusting if she got here. He’d trusted the academics to just keep shunting his conservative albatross aside for decades, give her some tenured professorship in Philosophy of Contact or some other nap class. Ask him a year ago and he’d have said that was the future of Deana Hanks.

  It wasn’t.

  The shiver that had started wouldn’t go away. It wasn’t fear, he said to himself. It was simply sitting in one spot in what he now realized, by the blowing of the curtains
, was a draft from the windows, until his legs went to sleep. It was the aftereffects of anesthetic. It was the whole crisis he’d been through—It was the whole, damnable, mishandled situation. He’d been in the eastern part of the continent, out of the information loop, when atevi needed him most. It might not be his fault; atevi might have put him there temporarily until they were assured they could rely on—not trust—him.

  But for whatever necessary satisfaction of atevi suspicion, he had been kept in the dark, all the same, and now if he misstepped—if he was even apprehended to misstep, politically—or if he pulled a mistake like Hanks’ mistake with lord Geigi, which he still had to clean up—

  Hell. He’d made a few mistakes himself, early on in his tenure.

  And hell twice—the woman had to have some sense, somewhere located. You couldn’t get through Comparative Reasoning or the math and physics requirements if you hadn’t at least the ability to draw abstract conclusions. He should give reason a try.

  He extricated himself from the chair, bit by slow bit and, letting his foot tingle back to awareness, got up and pulled the bell-cord. Saidin answered it. He sent Saidin after Jago, and Jago to deliver two verbal messages. To Tabini: I’ve learned all I’m likely to find out. I’m ready to talk to the public.

  And to Deana Hanks: I will shortly issue an official position on the ship presence; you will receive a copy. We need to talk. Is tomorrow evening possibly agreeable to your schedule?

  Then he went back to his chair, tucked up, and shut his eyes. Amazing how fast, how heavily sleep could come down, once the decision was made and the load was off.

  But he could afford to sleep now, he said to himself. Other people could deal with the scheduling and the meetings and the arranging of things. He half-waked when someone settled a coverlet over his legs, decided they didn’t need him, that the ship hadn’t swooped down with death rays yet, and he simply hugged the coverlet up over a breeze-chilled arm and enjoyed the comfortable angle he’d found.

  He waked again when Jago came to him, called his name and gave him another message cylinder sealed with Tabini’s seal.

  It gave the time of the joint session as midevening, unusual for atevi legislative proceedings, and added, simply, Your attendance and interpretations are gratefully requested, nand’ paidhi.

  “Any other message?” he asked. “Anything from the island?”

  “No, I regret not, Bren-ji.”

  “Did you talk to Deana Hanks? What did she say?”

  “She was very courteous,” Jago said. “She listened. She said tell you a word. I hesitate to say it.”

  “In Mosphei’, she gave you this word.”

  “I think that go-to-’elle is rude. Do I apprehend correctly?”

  Temper—was not what would serve him this evening. He made his face quite impassive.

  “I made no answer,” Jago said. “I am embarrassed to bring you such a report. If you have an answer, I will certainly carry it. Or we can bring this person to your office, Bren-paidhi.”

  Tempting. “Jago-ji, I’ve sent you to a fool. You will get an apology, or satisfaction.”

  “There are less comfortable accommodations than your old apartment, Bren-ji.”

  “She’s in my apartment?”

  Jago shrugged. “I fear so, Bren-ji. If I were handling her security, I’d advise otherwise.”

  “I want her moved out. Speak to Housing. This is not a woman without enemies.”

  Jago made a little moue, seemed to be thinking, and finally said, “Her security is very tight—for such a sieve. In terms of live bodies, quite a high level. I speak in confidence.”

  “I’ve no doubt. Tabini’s security?”

  “Yes. Which the aiji can relax at will.”

  Meaning leave her completely unprotected. Jago didn’t breach Tabini’s security on a whim. That Jago told him anything at all on a matter she didn’t need to mention was troubling.

  “Did Tabini tell you to tell me this?”

  Jago’s face was at its most unreadable.

  “No,” she said.

  Which meant narrowly what you could get it to mean—but when Jago took that tone, there was no more information forthcoming.

  6

  Plastic bags, scavenged from the post office downstairs, the female servants declared in triumph; and tape from the same source. It was Tano’s idea, so that a disreputable-feeling human, pushed beyond an already-fading interspecies modesty, could enjoy a real, honest-to-God hot shower, with all the bandages and the cast protected: “Nand’ paidhi, you don’t want to get water under the cast,” was Tano’s judgment. “Trust me in this.”

  He did. Waterproofed, he leaned against the wall in a real, beautifully tiled, modern bathroom, shut his eyes, breathed the steam, and felt the world swinging around an axis somewhere in the center of his skull.

  He was possibly about to commit treason. Was that what you called it, when it was your species as well as your nation in question?

  He was at least about to do something astonishingly foolhardy, going into this speech without one written note card for vocabulary, trusting adrenaline to hit and inspiration to arrive in his brain, when it wasn’t entirely certain that he owned the strength necessary to make it downstairs or a vocabulary more extensive than occurred on that card. It was the evening, the fairly late evening, of a very, very long day, and the shower and the steam were reducing him to a very, very low ebb of willpower.

  “Nand’ paidhi,” Tano called to him from outside the shower. “Nand’ paidhi, I regret, you should come out now.”

  It was an atevi-engineered luxury, that literally inexhaustible hot water supply. And he had to leave it. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair.

  He delayed the length of two long sighs, went out into the cruel brisk air and suffered the tape peeled; allowed himself to be unwrapped, toweled and, by now robbed of all modesty—and with the servants quite properly and respectfully professional—helped into his clothes: a silk shirt, re-tailored with a seam and fastenings up the arm, his coat, likewise sacrificed; soft, easy trousers of a modest and apolitical pale blue, a very good fit.

  Once he’d sat down, too, a further toweling of his past-the-shoulders hair and a competently done braid, the only thing for which he’d habitually relied on his servants.

  That was when the nerves began to wind tight. That was when he began to feel the old rush of adrenaline, a lawyer going into court, a diplomat going into critical negotiations. He was sitting, feeling the tugs at his hair as Tano plaited it, when Jago, wearing a black leather jacket despite the summer weather, arrived with a written message from Tabini, which said simply, There will be news cameras. Speak the truth. I have all confidence in you.

  News cameras. One didn’t damn the aiji to hell with the servants listening, no matter how one wanted to.

  “Where’s Banichi?” he asked. He was slipping toward combat-mode. He wanted everything that was his nailed down, accounted for, tallied and named. He knew Tabini in his slipperiest mode. He wanted Banichi on his side of the fence, not Tabini’s. He wanted to know what orders Banichi had, and from whom.

  “I don’t know, nadi,” Jago said. “I only know I’m to escort you, nadi, when you’re ready.”

  There was body armor and a weapon under that black leather coat, he was well sure. With feelings and suspicions understandably running high, it was entirely reasonable. And if Banichi wasn’t with him, Banichi was up to something that left his junior partner in charge—possibly serving as Tabini’s security, which Banichi also was. He had no way to know.

  And no choice but the duty in front of him.

  He gathered himself out of the chair and let Tano and the servants help him into the many-buttoned formal coat—which occasioned a little fuss with the discreetly placed fastenings that made the sleeve look relatively intact, and in order for the all-important ribbon-distinguished braid to lie outside the high collar. There were tweaks, there were adjustments, there were sly, curious and solemn looks.

 
; He stood, to the ebon, godlike ladies around him, about the size of a nine-year-old. He felt entirely overwhelmed and fragile, and hoped, God, hoped he retained the things he needed in his head, and wouldn’t—God help him—say or imply something disastrous tonight.

  “Jago-ji, if you’d bring the computer—I don’t think I’ll need it, but something might come up.”

  “Yes,” Jago said. “Are we ready, nand’ paidhi?”

  “I hope so,” he said, and was surprised and even moved when Saidin bowed deeply, with: “All the staff wishes you success, nand’ paidhi. Please do well for us.”

  “Nadi. Nadiin.” He bowed to the servants, who bowed with more than perfunctory courtesy. “You’ve made my work possible. Thank you ever so much for your courtesy and care.”

  “Nand’ paidhi,” the general murmur was. And a second all-round bow, on the tail of which Jago took him in charge, picked up the computer and headed him toward the outer chambers and the door. Tano, wearing a uniform identical to Jago’s, overtook them just before the foyer.

  Then it was out into the hall of porcelain flowers and down to the general security lift, which all the residents of the top two levels used, down the three floors to the broadest, most televised corridor in the Bu-javid, the entrance to the tashrid.

  He was accustomed to the territory. His own office wasn’t that far removed. But the halls were lighted from scaffolds supporting television cameras and crews, echoing with the goings and comings of staff and aides. If he’d felt overwhelmed by the servants, he was far more so here, in the entry to the hall itself, where the tall, elegant lords of the Association gathered and talked—more so, as silence fell where he and his escort walked, and became a quiet murmur at his back.

  There was a lesser corridor, for the privileged not wishing to be accosted in the aisles, a way into the tashrid, the house of lords, down the division between that and the much larger chamber of the hasdrawad, the commons. The screen which divided the two chambers was folded back, affording direct access to the joined chambers, where he could walk past the stares and the murmurous gossip of the members, down the slant of the figured carpet to that small set of ornately carved benches set aside for dignitaries and invited witnesses and petitioners.