Invader

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Shush.” It was the word one used with a child. “You’re due upstairs. Rest, Bren-ji. It is a physical necessity.”

  “Cenedi said there was trouble going on.”

  Banichi had pushed the call button. The car had arrived, but Banichi lingered to cast him a curious look. “Cenedi said,” Banichi reiterated.

  “Cenedi said—he’d stand with you in the Guild, if he had a choice.”

  “Did he?” They had to take the car or lose it. Banichi swept him inside and followed.

  With no intent, it seemed, of answering his question, even in general. But he thought Banichi had been at least taken off his guard by that information.

  And gave nothing back.

  “Banichi, dammit.”

  Banichi found it convenient to watch the floor indicator. Banichi was dressed fit for a council meeting: official, impervious, unruffled by whatever was going on.

  “A man died last night,” Bren said sharply.

  “One heard.” Banichi still didn’t look at him.

  “Banichi—one could arrange one’s affairs ever so much more wisely if one’s security told him something! I am not a fool, Banichi, don’t treat me as one.”

  Banichi offered a small, frayed smile. “Bren-ji, it’s your task to deal with ships and such. It’s ours to see you aren’t diverted by extraneous matters.”

  “The man had a family, Banichi. I can’t forget that.”

  The car stopped. The door opened.

  “We can’t discuss it here. Not a secure area, Bren-ji.”

  “What is? Besides the apartment I’m borrowing from—” But the microphones which evidently worried Banichi, which Banichi had equipment to detect, surely all that were in this hall served Tabini, and therefore were accessible to Damiri.

  It was that small uncertainty that stopped him.

  And why? he said to himself. Why could there be any question about third-floor security that Banichi couldn’t make sure of?

  Who was up here, with access to this floor, but staffs that held man’chi to Tabini, to—

  To the Atigeini woman who’d offered him her hospitality—and whose family opposed Tabini.

  Banichi stopped at the door to take out his key, and said, under his breath, “More than one man is dead, Bren-ji. Amateurs. I swear to you, it’s amateurs will bring us down. I’m sure it’s television. It plants foolish ideas in foolish heads that otherwise couldn’t remotely conceive such plans.”

  “You mean the representative from—”

  “One means that the Guild has refused arguments, bribes and coercion to undertake contracts against the paidhi.” Banichi opened the door into a foyer miraculously void of boxes. “Jago’s aim was accurate. His damaged a historical artifact. That—is the difference, among others. Kindly stay out of crowds, nadi.”

  The Assassins’ Guild operated by strict rules. They accosted you in hallways, they turned up in your bedroom, they met you on the steps outside, but they didn’t endanger bystanders, they didn’t take out accidental targets, and most of all they required the person who hired them to meet certain criteria of responsibility and to file Intent with the authorities. Who notified you. Formally. In some ways—in their Guild deliberations on what contracts to accept and what to reject—they were atevi lawyers.

  But the paidhi hadn’t acquired an assassin of Banichi’s and Jago’s class; he’d touched off some middle-aged man with a family.

  And probably nobody in the world remembered what he’d said last night. They’d just seen a man die, and nobody might even remember the difficult points he’d had to convince them of—the points he’d spent all his credit with his own government to make—and that thought brought a crashing depression—an aftershock, maybe—but with it a sense of being in well over his head.

  He walked into the apartment with Banichi and found the message bowl overflowing onto the table. Tano met their arrival; so did madam Saidin: Saidin with grave courtesy, Tano with relief evident.

  Which said to him Jago was not simply napping. And neither had Banichi been. Algini came from inside the security quarters, and Banichi and Algini were quite professional, quite matter-of-fact in their meeting.

  The tenor of which said to him that Algini’s presence in no way surprised Banichi and that Banichi just might have been at the airport when Algini came in.

  “Nand’ paidhi,” Tano said, meanwhile, “Hanks-paidhi has called. Three times.”

  Oh, God, he hadn’t countermanded the call and recall order. The operator had been ringing Hanks since the afternoon.

  “Did she leave any message?”

  “She was extremely angry. She said she wanted to speak with you personally.”

  “I do apologize, Tano.”

  “My job, nand’ paidhi. I’m glad to intercept it. There are telegrams from Mospheira. Three, nand’ paidhi. I wouldn’t mention any business I could manage without consulting, but—”

  He was tired. He was suddenly drained, and shaken, and he couldn’t take his own damn coat off himself. The servant had to help him with it—her name was—he’d heard her name—

  “I can’t,” he was forced to admit, and found his voice wobbling. “I can’t—Tano, I’m sorry, I can’t deal with these things tonight.”

  “Bren-ji is exhausted,” Banichi said as the last of the tape came free of the sleeve and Bren escaped the coat. He just wanted his bed. Just that. Soft pillows. No questions.

  But he was scared what might have come in those messages. He hoped one of them was from the President, accepting his position. He hoped it wasn’t damning him for a fool and ordering his recall for arrest.

  He had at least just to glance through those three and know what they were. He broke the seal on the first one, in his awkward, arm-braced procedure. It was from Barb.

  Bren, it said. I didn’t know. I feel so bad. Please call me.

  He was numb, at first reading. Then he tossed it casually back into the message basket. He was angry—maybe as angry as he’d ever been at anyone in his life.

  Or hurt. He couldn’t decide. He couldn’t ask himself for coherent judgment right now, least of all to judge Barb. He opened the second telegram, which proved to be from his mother. It said, Sorry I missed you at the hospital, but after that, the censors had made lace out of it. Not a damned sentence in the thing was intact but that, and whatever his mother had meant to say—God knew. He couldn’t decipher anything from the I’s and a’s and the’s.

  Which meant his mother had said things critical to security—and his mother never knew anything critical to security. There was nothing she ever had to say to him that the censors would reasonably block, it just wasn’t in her knowledge of the universe.

  Something could have happened at home, maybe something they didn’t want him to hear right now—but then why did the censors let that one line get through, when they could have stalled the whole letter? They could have sent the telegram down a black hole and he wouldn’t have known it and his mother wouldn’t have, until they could compare notes—so why worry him, if they were just trying to save him from worry in the first place? He didn’t understand what was going on. They hadn’t censored Barb, who’d certainly disturbed him, and those personal matters weren’t likely secret from Departmental censors. It didn’t make sense.

  The third was from the State Department. It began, Field Officer Cameron: the title the State Department accorded him, though there was only one field and only one officer; it launched straight into The Department advises you on behalf of the President that it is taking your report under advisement. In the meantime, it orders in the strongest possible terms that you make no further translation of intercepted transmissions as …

  Oh, well, he thought, that’s all. He was too numb to give a damn and too far along the course to damnation to think it mattered. He tossed that telegram straight into the wastebasket, to the shock of Tano and bystanders, then gathered up Barb’s and his mother’s and chucked them after it.

  Ilisidi’s messag
e cylinder had come back again. He opened that last. It said, An old woman desires your company on any morning you feel inclined. You improve our circulation. And you have such pretty hair.

  He read it three times, with a lump in his throat and the illegitimate and fatal satisfaction of believing one living being in the universe enjoyed his company; one lord of the Association didn’t want to buy him, kill him, or use him—or wasn’t assigned by Tabini to protect him. Very opposite things were the possibility. But, dammit, at least he knew what and why.

  He gave that cylinder to Tano. “Nadi, a courteous appreciation to the dowager, with my desire to join her at breakfast sometime very soon. Tell the lady dowager—tell her I treasure her flattery. Please see it delivered tonight. Order a felicitous arrangement of flowers with the message.”

  He surely shocked Tano, on more than one account. Then he wandered off, out of the foyer toward his own bed, forgetful until he was in his own doorway that he’d left Banichi without a second look or a word of courtesy—but Banichi probably had his own instructions to give to Tano and Algini, or maybe Banichi just lingered to share a cup of tea with people who didn’t ask him unanswerable questions.

  At least Banichi was back—and Jago had vanished, if she wasn’t in her room asleep, as Banichi had claimed to have been.

  Maybe, he thought muzzily, they took waking turns at whatever they were doing, which he knew in his heart of hearts was Tabini’s business, and Tabini’s security. They’d never left him alone, nor would. He could rely on mat. Popular as he was making himself—he had to rely on it.

  He’d made Hanks mad. He was too tired to deal with it. Hell, he probably could start by apologizing, but he wasn’t interested.

  He undressed with the help of a half dozen demure servants, made his requisite nest in his bed, propped his cast with pillows, and only as he lay down realized they’d installed the television he requested, against the far wall, and a turn of his head found not only the requested water glass but a television remote within his reach at the bedside table. His nerves were one long buzz of exhaustion, his senses threatening to blank out on him, which he wished would just happen: he wanted to shut his eyes and let his mind spiral down to the sleep he’d won. But, Please call, Barb said.

  Bloody damn hell. Call. Calling might have been in order, all right—for her to call him when he was in town—at least to have called the hospital. She’d probably been off on her honeymoon.

  He’d forgiven her—everything but that “Please call,” the way she’d always say when they’d disagreed. She knew the hours he kept in a work crisis, she knew she should call in the morning if she wanted to catch him with a personal problem. But, no, he should call her. Tonight. He should call her. He should do the negotiating, meaning cajole her into doling out this little reaction and that little reaction until he guessed his way through her crisis and placated her.

  For what? For getting married? He wasn’t in the mood.

  He reached irritably for the television remote, flipped it on to find out what was on the news, and saw himself, sitting at the council table, heard himself, and knew that Mospheira could pick up that broadcast quite nicely—as the mainland regularly picked up whatever Mospheira let hit the airwaves.

  There was footage of damage to something somewhere, but that wasn’t bomb damage from Malguri; it seemed to be nothing more than a windstorm taking the roof off a local bam. A machimi play was on the next channel, a machimi he knew, a drama of inheritance and skullduggery, the resolution to which lay in two clans deciding they hated a third clan worse than they hated each other—very atevi, very logical. Lots of costumes, lots of battles.

  Glassy-eyed and fading, he flipped back to the news, hoping to hear the weather, wishing for a cold front to alleviate what promised to be a still, muggy night.

  The news anchor was saying something, this time without footage, about a parliamentary procedure recalling members of the Assassins’ Guild to the city, a procedure which a spokesman for the Guild called an administrative election.

  The hell, he thought, disquieted. They censored his mother’s letter and Banichi was gone for a day and a night on administrative elections, while Cenedi said it was a crisis in the Guild? Jago also had a vote. And might be casting it.

  And Banichi had said something about the Guild rejecting contracts on the paidhi. Disturbing thought. By how much, he wondered, had they voted down the contracts? And what would acceptance of those contracts have meant to Tabini’s stability in office?

  He found no comfort in the news. He could watch the play, which at least had color and movement. But the eyes were going and the mind had already gone or he wouldn’t contemplate staying awake at all.

  He was aware of dark, then, a suddenly dark room, and he must have slept—the television was showing a faint just-turned-off glow and a large man was standing in front of it.

  “Banichi?” he asked faintly.

  “One should never acknowledge being awake,” Banichi said. “Delay gives one just that much more advantage.”

  “I have a house full of security,” he objected. “And I haven’t a gun any longer.”

  “Look in your dresser,” Banichi said.

  “You’re joking.” He wanted to go look, but he hadn’t the strength to get up.

  “No,” Banichi said. “Good night, Bren-ji. Jago’s back now, by the way. All’s well.”

  “Can we talk, Banichi?”

  “Talk of what, nadi?” Banichi had become a shadow in the doorway, in the dim light from some open door down the hall. But Banichi waited.

  “About the election going on in your Guild, about what Cenedi found it his duty to warn me about—about what I suppose I’d better know since I’ve accepted another of Ilisidi’s invitations.”

  “With suggestive grace, nadi. One is surprised.”

  “I like the old woman,” he said shortly to a silhouette against the doorway, and well knew the word didn’t mean like in the humanly emotional sense. “And there, of course, I have information I don’t get here.”

  “Because you think the aiji-dowager is a salad and you value information from those most interested in disinforming you?”

  He knew he should laugh. He didn’t have it in him. It came out a weak moan, and his voice cracked. “Nadi, I think she’s a breath of fresh air, you’re a salad, yourself, and I’m collecting everything I can find that tells me how to make humans in the sky not fly down tomorrow morning in satellites and loot the Bu-javid treasures—I’m so damned tired, Banichi. Everybody wants my opinion and nobody wants to tell me a damned thing, how do I know she’s disinforming me? Nothing else makes sense.”

  Banichi came and stood over him, throwing shadow like a blanket over him. “One has tried to protect you from too much distraction, nadi.”

  “Protect me less. Inform me more. I’m desperate, Banichi. I can’t operate in an informational vacuum.”

  “Jago will take you to the country house at Taiben, at your request. It might be a safer place.”

  “Is there anything urgently the matter with where I am?”

  That provoked a moment of troubling silence.

  “Is there, Banichi?”

  “Nand’ paidhi, Deana Hanks has been sending other messages under your seal.”

  “Damn. Damn. —Damn.” He shut his eyes. He was perilously close to unconsciousness. So tired. So very tired. “I don’t mean to accuse, but I thought you had that stopped. What’s she up to?”

  “Nand’ paidhi, she’s in regular communication with certain of the tashrid. And we don’t know how she got the seal, but she is using it.”

  He had to redirect his thinking. Three-quarters of the way to sleep, he had to come back, ask himself why Taiben, and where Hanks got a seal.

  “Came with it,” he said, “a damn forgery. Mospheira could have managed it.”

  “One hesitated to malign your office. That thought did occur to us. Equally possible, of course, that the forgery was created by our esteemed lords of t
he tashrid. And I don’t say we haven’t intercepted these messages before sending them on. They’re some of them—quite egregiously misphrased.”

  “Dangerously?”

  “She asked the lord of Korami province for a pregnant calendar.”

  Pregnant calendar and urgent meeting. He began to laugh, and sanity gave way; he laughed until the tape hurt.

  “I take it that’s not code?”

  “Oh, God, oh, God.”

  “Are you all right, Bren-ji?”

  He gradually caught his breath. “I’m very fine, thank you, Banichi. God, that’s wonderful.”

  “Other mistakes are simply grammatical. And she speaks very bluntly.”

  “Never would believe you needed the polish.” Humor fell away to memories of Deana after the exams, Deana in a sullen temper.

  “We are keeping a log. We can do this—since it’s our language under assault.”

  He laughed quietly, reassured in Banichi’s good-humored confidences that things couldn’t be so bad, that they could still joke across species lines, and he was fading fast, too fast to remember to question Banichi about the weather report, before, between flutters of tired eyelids, he found Banichi had ebbed out of the room, quiet as the rest of the shadows.

  He hoped it would rain again and relieve the heat, which seemed excessive this evening, or it was the padding he was obliged to put around him.

  Still, he was sleepy, and he didn’t want to move—Banichi was all right, Banichi was watching, and if he waited patiently there was, he discovered, a very slight and promising breeze circulating through the apartment, from open windows, he supposed, perfumed with flowers he remembered—

  But that was Malguri, was it not? Or his garden.

  He shut his eyes again, having found a position that didn’t hurt, and when he felt the breeze he saw the hillsides of Malguri, he saw the riders on tall mecheiti.

  He felt Nokhada striding under him, saw the rocks passing under them—

  The ominous shadow of a plane crossing the mountainside …