Invader

by C. J. Cherryh

  Which he didn’t forget in the context of his falling-out with Ilisidi. He didn’t like to think of the likes of the Guild moving in on the little village and disturbing the place—because it wouldn’t be Guild members like Cenedi and Banichi, who had the polite finesse to make a person truly believe they were off duty when they never were; he didn’t like to think of the place destroyed by his brief attention to it, or the astronomers’ lives changed irrevocably for the worse.

  But security for the observatory was nothing he should or could protest; he’d been chasing the numbers too concentratedly even to think how the importance of the place had suddenly changed, when the old man had come rushing in with his answer: Grigiji had become someone valuable to Tabini, and therefore a target, as everything Tabini touched directly or indirectly was a target. He’d forgotten, in the delusion he could seek an answer for Geigi on his own, and slip it—God, it seemed naive now—into llisidi’s hands with no untoward result.

  The paidhi had been a thoroughgoing fool. The paidhi had not only blown up bridges with Ilisidi, he’d put the observatory and Grigiji at risk, possibly done something completely uncalculated regarding Geigi and Geigi’s province and Geigi’s relationship to llisidi and to Tabini—the paidhi was consequently thoroughly depressed, thoroughly disgusted with his quick and perhaps now very costly feint aside to chase what had looked like a good idea at the time.

  The way for the paidhi to do what Wilson-paidhi hadn’t been able to and Hanks-paidhi couldn’t: get the conservative atevi and Tabini’s faction simultaneously behind an idea.

  The hero’s touch. The heroics he’d accused Hanks of, that Hanks had come back at him with—and by what he saw now, Hanks had had the right of it.

  Hanks deserved a phone call, at least to set up a meeting to brief her on the essentials, and on what a hash he might have made of her slip with Geigi. It wasn’t going to be easy to explain, it wasn’t going to be pleasant, and he wasn’t ready to cope with it. Not yet.

  He sat down to go through the message stack—the new office was actually settling in to work, and he had a number of appreciations for the cards he’d sent; the table in the foyer was overflowing with the traditional gifts of flowers from the new employees, so many they’d accumulated in a tasteful bow about the table and in other areas of the floor where they wouldn’t impede traffic, and he supposed he ought to have been cheered, but his arm ached, his ribs ached, and breakfast wasn’t sitting well. He asked Algini for his computer, took his correspondence to the sitting room, and sat and prepared reports, and reports.

  Saidin quietly adjusted the windows for ventilation and light, and set a fan to operation. He’d grown less distracted by the comings and goings of the staff. He almost failed to notice, until Saidin crossed between him and the light.

  “I need to speak to Banichi, nand’ Saidin,” be said. He wanted a time for leisurely discussion. “Is he back yet?”

  “Not yet, nand’ paidhi. Algini is on duty.”

  “Jago?”

  “I believe she went down to the Guild offices, nadi. One could send.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s not urgent.” His eyes were tired, and among his messages was an advisement Tabini was directing the mathematics faculty to look at Grigiji’s notes. And his notes, which he hoped he hadn’t miscopied. He’d protested that to Tabini and urged him if there were mistakes to attribute them to human copying, not Grigiji’s math.

  Among his messages was an extensive new transcript from the ship, which contained more document transmissions between Mospheira and the ship, more of Mospheira’s very specific questions about origins and direction of travel and findings—which the ship hadn’t answered fully. There was a direct question about the supposed other station and its location, and whether—a question that hadn’t even occurred seriously to him—the ship might have left the solar system at all, but whether it might in fact have established the long-threatened base at Maudette, the red, desolate further-out planet atevi called Esili—the planet to which, before the Landing, the Pilots’ Guild had wanted to move the colony rather than have it land on the atevi world.

  No, the ship said. It had visited another star. There was no base at Maudette.

  Which star? the President wanted to know, and named several near ones.

  The Guild said, logically enough, that they had no such names on file; then asked for star charts with atevi names. And renewed the discussion about landing sites—in regard to which the ship wanted general maps and names.

  Which Mospheira, in a sudden reticence, refused to provide until the ship was forthcoming with star charts.

  At which point the woman Yolanda Mercheson came on com, wishing to speak to the President.

  And the President was quite pleasant. Quite encouraging. The President said he advised a landing on Mospheira as the best way to guarantee human sovereignty—and Mercheson said she’d present that view.

  Then Mercheson presented a shopping list of raw materials and asked pointedly if Mospheira had those goods.

  The President didn’t know. The President would get back to her with that information, but he knew they had some extensive stockpiles of materials. Stockpiles.

  Flash of dark. Terror. Pain. Cold metal and a looming shadow, asking him … accusing him …

  Most clearly you’re stockpiling metals. You increase your demands for steel, for gold—you give us industries, and you trade us microcircuits for graphite, for titanium, aluminum, palladium, elements we didn’t know existed a hundred years ago, and, thanks to you, now we have a use for. Now you import them, minerals that don’t exist on Mospheira. For what? For what do you use these things, if not the same things you’ve taught us—

  Barrel of a gun against his head. A question he’d taken at face value at that moment, and pain and fear had wiped out the context—no, he hadn’t known the context at that moment, he hadn’t known the ship had returned to atevi skies, he hadn’t known the situation the interrogator was implying … space-age stockpiles for an event the whole human population of the planet might have been waiting to spring on atevi. At that terrorized, dreadful moment he’d thought only … aircraft. Only … a hidden launch program. Only … of dying there. And he hadn’t half-remembered the question in the light of what he’d learned later.

  Stockpiles—of goods critical to a space program.

  He’d protested he wasn’t an engineer, he didn’t know …and the interrogator had said … you slip numbers into the dataflow. You encourage sectarian debates to delay us….

  The argument of Ilisidi’s allies. Ilisidi’s constituency, the constituency Ilisidi had ostensibly betrayed—but never count an ateva to have changed sides completely. There were always points of stress in an association.

  Sectarian debates to delay us….

  And he’d said … We build test vehicles. Models. We test what we think we understand before we give advice that will let some ateva blow himself to bits, nadi …

  He’d thought that was all the truth. He’d told that to an interrogator whose identity he still didn’t know, a man who might have been Ilisidi’s, or a partisan of someone affiliated to Ilisidi.

  He’d hadn’t known then … about the ship. He hadn’t understood the matter about sectarian debates. Or the significance of stockpiles of materials for a space program. He’d talked to them about aircraft. He’d maintained human innocence …

  He lost his place in the tape. His fingers were cold as he punched buttons and ran it back, and heard the section through again, and knew he’d promised Ilisidi along with Tabini a transcript of all his translations.

  Stockpiles … the atevi held to be extensive. Stockpiles of minerals Mospheira didn’t otherwise have….

  Stockpiles begun—God knew how long ago. The paidhi, on informed opinion, didn’t believe they could be that extensive, since the paidhi knew with fair certainty what had generally gone to Mospheira and what Mospheira would use—unless there were Defense Department secrets too deep and too old for the cu
rrent paidhi to know, or trading—as could sometimes happen—that didn’t get reported accurately to Shejidan.

  There were bunkers in the high center of Mospheira, places fenced off from hikers and guarded by people with guns, which citizens accepted—you didn’t go there. You didn’t mess with those perimeters. They were antiquated, increasingly so, in an increasingly peaceful world—at least—the idea of air raid shelters seemed antiquated, in his generation. But there’d been fear of atevi landings on the beaches before there’d been aircraft.

  There’d been fear of atevi air attacks, when they’d given atevi aviation, and situated aircraft manufacturing on the mainland. The bunkers were supposed to be nerve centers, critical command posts, things to make sure no attack ever drove humans to the brink of extinction again.

  They said they were command posts. Nothing about how deep they were, how extensive they were—or what they contained. And if they contained what he’d been asked about, if there were stockpiles the President of Mospheira could use to deal with the ship—

  Mospheira couldn’t call the aiji’s bluff. He couldn’t have set Tabini up to make a threat of boycott and have Mospheira go around the obstacle with some damned antique storage dump.

  But it was supply. Even if it existed—it didn’t manufacture itself. The manufacturing plants that did exist on Mospheira couldn’t be converted at a snap of the fingers to do what they hadn’t been designed to do—

  But Mospheira didn’t educate the paidhiin in what the Defense Department did, or had, or wanted: it was specifically excluded, that area of inquiry. And when the government and State specifically cleared some plastics factory on the East Frontage for ecological impact—you trusted they were making domestic-use articles.

  The Department sent the paidhiin into the field not knowing that for an absolute, examined fact. The paidhiin knew there were no death rays. He knew that as an article of faith. There were no nuclear installations. There were no truly exotic sites: the colonists hadn’t had those kind of weapons and hadn’t given atevi a nuclear capability … yet.

  But this talk of stockpiles made a chill down his back, and told him the paidhi might for once in a career of mandated consultations before moving truly need to consult—and might now, if his current actions hadn’t set the Defense Department on its ear and sent the Secretary of Defense straight to the President’s door with a reckoning of exactly how far and with what offer to the spacefarers they could call Tabini’s hand and defy a boycott.

  Dammit, he couldn’t trust his files regarding a history he had no idea whether the censor Seekers had reached, or not reached—he couldn’t trust what he’d been told. How did the paidhi even trust that his own education hadn’t censored or even lied about vital facts? Once censorship was at issue—how did anyone, any official trust how far it would go, when it would have begun, whose information it would have censored, or what it would have constructed as a substitute for the truth? Humans had come close to annihilation. They hadn’t had weapons. Atevi in the early days couldn’t trade them aluminum or titanium or any space-age material. Mospheirans could get plastics, they could get anything vegetable fiber could produce, anything they could get from limited drilling along the North Shore; they had solar energy and electricity, but they hadn’t been set up to realize a need two centuries along and slip enough into storage to hold out against the interlinking of the Mospheiran/atevi economies—

  Mospheirans hadn’t, all along, been that damn canny, that damn persistent, or that damned concerned about their future—the radicals might wish they’d been, the radicals might have a fantasy they’d been, and maybe something did exist in stockpiles, but it didn’t translate to real capacity to hold against an atevi cutoff of supplies—

  —or to anticipate some traitorous paidhi cutting a deal with Phoenix and trying to exclude Mospheira, all for the planetary good. They couldn’t have him boxed in. Never say to atevi at large that the aiji had made a threat he couldn’t back or a promise that made him look foolish. Blood could flow in the streets if that happened. Blood was ready to flow in the streets, if he made such a mistake.

  He wrote, Aiji-ma, regarding the most recent ship conversations with Mospheira, the expected behind the doors negotiations have proposed human stockpiles of materials I have proposed you threaten to withhold. My hope based on experience living on and traveling on the island is that they’re small, not containing everything a space program needs, and that they might be used for bargaining and for attempting to attract the ship to their point of view, and that the Mospheiran government might exaggerate their size in an attempt to get a better agreement.

  This, however, does not guarantee I am right about their size. If they should be larger, I have advised you badly, and you must take whatever measures you deem appropriate.

  On the other hand, the ship can determine even buried reserves from orbit, as well as the character of factories. It is my hope that factories are not sufficient even if such stockpiles exist, and that they cannot be built in a timely enough fashion to satisfy the ship’s leaders.

  Further, we have presented the ship extensive political reasons to accept your conditions.

  But I am dismayed to know now that I was asked about this matter in Malguri and did not at the time realize its import, nor recall it in preparing my estimates and advisements to you. I am completely to blame for any negative result. I have erred once today in estimating the dowager’s response, as I believe Banichi will have told you. At the reading of the enclosed transcript you may judge I have erred repeatedly and egregiously. If this is so, I urge you not to listen to me further, and to take my advice as that of an underinformed official to whom his own government has not confided sufficient truth to rely upon.

  I feel I have no recourse now but to write the dowager, and I have given a firm pledge to do so. But I shall delay my response and take the disgrace on myself for doing so, in hopes that events or greater wisdom than mine will find a means for you to secure your own interests in advance of my fulfilling a rash promise that may have placed me in a position incompatible with your best interests. If I were placed under arrest, I could not send such a message, aiji-ma.

  Please believe, as I have in profound embarrassment urged upon Ilisidi, that I wished to do good for her and for you, and that it is not through hostile intent or orders of my government that I have done what I have done.

  It was not a cheerful message to have to write. He appended the transcript. He sent the message, via his remote, to the aiji’s fax, rather than using courier, if for nothing else, that propriety mattered less than speed of getting that message next door.

  He sat staring at the blowing curtains and asking himself, with a certain tightness in the throat, how far he could impose on atevi patience.

  Or how far he could even believe in his own increasingly remote attenuation of logic.

  He knew what interests he was fighting on Mospheira. He hadn’t been utterly sure until Shawn’s message turned up—but that confirmed he’d guessed right, that far, once the ship was in the equation, exactly where the pressure would come from and who would apply it. He just—

  —had reached the end of his personal credit, his personal ability, his personal strength, and he’d made a couple of mistakes in his sudden downhill rush to get the landing finalized that had cost him, personally, cost Tabini, personally, cost Ilisidi, and might cost political credit and lives across an entire atevi and human world before the shock waves settled.

  Where did he think he could go setting up an atevi way to see the universe—knowing, God help him, that the old, old wisdom in the Department had always held that atevi would make some conceptual break and go spiraling off into a mathematical dark where humans weren’t going to understand. And where in human hell did he think that point of departure was likeliest going to come if not in the highest, most esoteric math—which he, in his personal brilliance, had gone kiting off to beg of the persons most likely to come up with it—

  Good merc
iful God, what did he expect but upset when he tossed the mathematical bombshell into the capital, the court, the touchiest political maneuvering of the last century—and let it lie on the breakfast table of the ateva least likely to benefit?

  How in hell did he reconcile that little gift with his emotional appeal for ’Sidi-ji to rise above politics, rise to the good of the Association, sacrifice herself on the altar of her grandson’s success?

  He’d done that, after what he’d adequately remembered once prompted, and he hadn’t seen it? Damned right he hadn’t drawn the two threads together, when a faster mind could have anticipated Mospheira would fight back on the boycott issue. He should have asked himself what Mospheira could have stored; most of all he should have remembered the stockpile question that atevi themselves had asked him in what his foundering mind had catalogued as some totally unrelated event.

  Damn it to bloody hell, he’d danced into it blindly sure he had a good gift to give in that paper. And it had probably nailed the lid on the coffin, so far as Ilisidi’s confidence he wasn’t stupidly playing the same game her associates had accused humans of playing for centuries: undermining atevi belief, atevi institutions, all at the same time reserving supplies and fostering an atevi manufacturing program not for atevi’s sake but only to get those supplies they needed for themselves.

  For a ship maybe some humans had believed more strongly than others was going to return.

  His eyes hurt. He pinched his nose. And the arm hurt, lying inert in his lap, perhaps objecting to two-handed keyboard work, perhaps objecting to how he’d slept on it—he’d no idea, but it ached.

  From frenetic, the place had grown too quiet. He wanted company. But Banichi and Jago were off about various business, Tabini was probably dealing with the matter he’d dropped in Tabini’s lap. Tabini was probably too angry to speak to him, or even preparing orders for his arrest, as he’d invited, who knew?