Invader

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Power. Like it or not.” Tabini gave back the message roll, and Naidiri went back, one presumed, to the little staff office Taiben had in the back hall. “On my guess, the man doesn’t understand why you went personally to the observatory. He doesn’t understand the signal you sent—we know your impulsive character. But lord Geigi—is completely at a loss.”

  “I couldn’t rely on someone to translate mathematics to me when so much was riding on it. Third-hand never helps on something I can hardly understand myself. —Besides, it was nand’ Grigiji’s work. Banichi said he baffles his own students.”

  “That he does,” Tabini said. “I’ve asked what we should do for this man. He professed himself content, and took a nap.”

  “Did he?”

  “The emeritus’ students, however, begged the paidhi to give them a chance to write to the university on Mospheira.”

  Bren drew in a breath and let it go slowly. “Very deep water.”

  “One believes so.”

  “Access to atevi computer theory discussions? The university would be interested. It might move the cursed committee.”

  “Possibly.”

  He couldn’t help it, then. He gave a quiet, rueful laugh. “If Mospheira’s speaking to me. I’ve yet to prove that. And the ship—will change a lot of things.”

  “Ah. No challenge even for my ‘possibly.’ So sad.”

  “I will challenge it. But I won’t tell you how in advance, aiji-ma. Leave me my maneuvering room.”

  Tabini laughed silently. “So. You and I were to go fishing. But I fear there’s a business afoot—”

  He didn’t know how he could drag himself out of the chair. Or, in fact, sleep at night. “One understood back in Shejidan, aiji-ma, that the fish might have to wait.”

  “You look very tired.”

  “I can look more enthusiastic. Tell me where and when. Otherwise I’ll save it for the landing.”

  “I think we should have a quiet supper, the two of us. We should talk about the character of our women, share a game of darts, and drink by the fire.”

  “That sounds like a very good program, aiji-ma.”

  “The fish can sleep safely this evening, then. Possibly the paidhi will get some rest.”

  “The paidhi certainly intends to try.”

  It was, as Tabini promised, a quiet supper. Other people were very busy—Banichi and Jago had gone off duty for the last quarter of the afternoon and, one assumed, fallen facedown and slept like stones, Bren told himself: it had to be rare that they could sleep in the sure knowledge they were absolutely safe, absolutely surrounded by security, and the primary job wasn’t theirs.

  He certainly didn’t begrudge them that.

  And after supper, Tabini defeated him soundly at darts—but he won three games of ten, whether by skill or the aiji’s courtesy, and they sat, as Tabini had promised, by the fire.

  “I’d imagine our visitors are well away by now,” Bren said in the contemplation the moment offered. “I’d imagine they’ll board the lander at the very last—ride out in whatever craft will take them to the brink, and perform their last-minute checks tomorrow. Everything has to be on schedule, or I’m sure they’d have called.”

  “These are very brave people,” Tabini said.

  “Very scared people. It’s a very old lander.” He took a sip of liquor and stared into the endless patterns of the wood fire. “The world’s changing, aiji-ma. Mine is, the mainland will.” Tabini had never yet mentioned Ilisidi’s presence in the house. “I have a request, aiji-ma, that regard for me should never prompt you to grant against your better judgment. They tell me the dowager was here last night. That she’s with the Atigeini. —Which I do not understand. But I would urge—”

  Tabini was utterly quiet for the moment. Not looking at him. And he looked back toward the fire.

  “In my perhaps mistaken judgment, aiji-ma—the dowager, if she is involved, seems more the partisan of the Preservation Commission than of any political faction. At least regarding ideas expressed to me. Perhaps she was behind the events last night. But I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so.”

  “I think if Cenedi had meant to do me harm, he had far subtler means. And they wouldn’t guest with the Atigeini if they’d shot up the breakfast room. That’s all I’ll say this evening on politics. But I want to speak for the dowager, if I have any credit at all.”

  “Your last candidate for favor was Hanks-paidhi.”

  “True.”

  “Well, trust grandmother to find a landing spot. I offered her a plane. Which she declined.”

  “It’s, as I said, Tabini-ma, the limit of my knowledge. I only wish to communicate my impression that she viewed the experience of atevi before humans came as an important legacy to guide the aiji in an age of change and foreign ways. I realize I’m a very poor spokesman for that viewpoint. But even against your displeasure I advance it, as my minimal debt to what I believe to be a wise and farseeing woman.”

  “Gods inferior and blasphemed, you’re so much more collected than Brominandi. That wretch had the effrontery to send me a telegram in support of the rebels, do you know?”

  “I hadn’t known.”

  “He should take lessons from you. At telegraph rates he’s spent his annual budget.”

  “But I believe it, aiji-ma. I’d never urge you against what I believe is to the benefit of atevi.”

  “Grandmother will take no harm of me.”

  “But Malguri.”

  “Nor will there be public markets at Malguri. —Which some would urge, you understand. Some see the old places as superfluous, an emblem of opprobrious privilege.”

  “I see it,” he said, “as something atevi can never obtain from human books.”

  Tabini said nothing in reply to that. Only recrossed his ankles on the footstool, and the two of them stared at the fire a moment.

  “Where is man’chi,” Tabini asked him, “paidhi-ji?”

  “Mine? One thought atevi didn’t ask one another such questions.”

  “An aiji may ask. —Of course—”

  A hurried group of security went through the room, and the seniormost, it seemed, stopped. “Aiji-ma, pardon.” The man gave Tabini a piece of paper, which Tabini read.

  Tabini’s leg came down off the chair arm. Tabini sat up, frowning.

  “Is it distributed?” Tabini asked.

  “Unfortunately so.”

  “No action against the paper. Do inquire their connections. One wonders if this is accidental.”

  “Aiji-ma.” The security officer left.

  And Tabini scowled.

  “Trouble?” Superfluous question.

  “Oh, a small matter. Merely a notice in the resort society paper that we’re here for the landing.”

  “Lake society?”

  “The lake resort. A thousand tourists. At least. Passed out free to every campsite at the supply store.”

  “God.”

  “Invite the whole damned resort, why don’t we? They’ll be here, with camping gear and cameras and children! We’ve a chance of heavy arms fire! Of bombs, from small aircraft! We’ve a thousand damned tourists, gods unfortunate!”

  Public land. There was no border, no boundary. One thing ran into the other.

  “Damned if this is a mistake,” Tabini said. “The publisher knows it’s stupid, the publisher knows it won’t make a landing easier or safer. Dammit, dammit, dammit!”

  Tabini flung himself to his feet. Bren gathered himself up more cautiously, as Tabini drew his coat closed and showed every sign of taking off.

  “We can’t be butchering tourists in mantraps,” Tabini said. “Bren, put yourself to bed. Get some rest. It’s clear I won’t.”

  “If I could help in any way—”

  “Since none of our problems of tonight speak Mosphei’, I fear not. Stay by the phone. Be here in case we receive calls from the heavens that something’s gone amiss. Don’t wait up.”

  Property whe
re private was sacrosanct and even tourists respected a security line—but a landing was a world-shattering event. The Landing was the end of the old world as the Treaty was the beginning of the new. Atevi were attracted to momentous events, and believed, in the way of numbers, that having been in the harmony of the moment gave them a special importance in the universe.

  There couldn’t be an ateva in the whole world, once the news got beyond Taiben and once it hit the lake resort and the airport, who wouldn’t phone a relative to say that humans were falling out of the sky again, and they were doing it here, at dawn tomorrow.

  It wasn’t a prescription for early sleep. Tano and Algini came in briefly to say they’d indeed contacted the rangers, who took the rail over to the lake and personally, on the loudspeakers, advised tourists that it was a dangerous area, that and that they risked the aiji’s extreme displeasure.

  “One wonders how many have already left,” Bren said.

  “The rangers are all advised,” Algini said.

  “But one couldn’t tell tourists from Guild members looking for trouble.”

  “Many of us know each other,” Tano said. “Especially in the central region.”

  “But true,” Algini said, “that one has to approach closer than one would like to tell the difference. It’s very clever, what they’ve done.”

  “Who’s done? Does anybody know who’s behind this?”

  “There’s a fairly long list, including neighboring estates.”

  “But the message. Was it the dowager’s doing?”

  “One doesn’t know. If—”

  “Nand’ paidhi,” a member of Tabini’s staff was in the doorway. “A human is calling.”

  “I’m coming.” He was instantly out of the chair, and with Tano and Algini who had come from that wing, which they’d devoted to operations, he followed the man to the nearest phone.

  “This is Bren Cameron. Hello?”

  “Jase Graham. Got a real small window here. Closer we get …” There was breakup. “Everything on schedule?”

  “We’re fine. How are you?”

  “I lost that. Where are you?”

  “Fifty kilometers from the landing site. I’ll be there, do you hear?”

  “We’re … board the lander. Systems … can you…?”

  “Repeat, please.”

  There was just static. Then: “See you. You copy?”

  “Yes! I get that! I’ll be there!”

  The communication faded out in static, tantalizing in what he didn’t know, reassuring in what he could hear.

  And what could they say? Watch out for hikers? We hope nobody shoots at the lander?

  “They’re on schedule,” he said. “When are we going out there?”

  “One hasn’t heard that you were going, nand’ paidhi,” Tano said.

  That was a possibility he hadn’t even considered. If he was at Taiben, he’d damn sure be at the landing in the morning. He wasn’t leaving two humans to be scared out of their minds or to make some risky misassumption before they reached the lodge.

  “Where’s Tabini?” he asked. “I need to talk to him.”

  “Nand’ paidhi,” Algini said, “we’ll make that request.”

  “No talking through relays. I want to talk to him.”

  He was being, perhaps, unreasonable. But if the tourist emergency had hauled Tabini off where he couldn’t get to Tabini before they arranged details that left him out, he was damned mad, and surprised, and frustrated.

  “Yes, nand’ paidhi,” Algini said, and a certain part of Taiben’s whole communications diverted itself, probably not operationally wise, probably an obstruction of operations and possibly a dangerous betrayal of the fact Tabini wasn’t under Taiben’s roof at the moment.

  “Don’t make noise about it,” he said. “Just—I need this straightened out. They could come down in need of medical help. They could need a translator. Or first aid. Which I can give—at least have a good guess. There’s a chance of a rough landing. And I don’t want a mistake.”

  “I’ll find the aiji,” Tano said.

  “Thank you, nadi.”

  Which meant Tano hiking out through the dark himself. He was sorry about it. But the reasons that came to him were real reasons.

  Dammit.

  So he went back to the central hall and paced and repositioned bric-a-brac, and waited, in general, until, short of breath, Tano came in with, “Paidhi-ma. Banichi confirms you’re to be picked up with the rest, two hours before dawn.”

  “Thank you, Tano-ji,” he said, and felt foolish, having had Tano run all over the estate, in the dark, but it eased his mind enough he at least lost his urge to pace the floor.

  And after that, he decided it might be wise at least to go to bed, get what rest he could without sleeping—he refused to sleep, for fear something would happen and they would leave him behind—and be ready to go in the morning.

  So he went down the hall into the guest wing, dismissed the servants who were determined to be of help, and began, alone, to lay out the clothes he wanted for what might end up being a hike.

  But the jacket he regularly wore for hiking had the brilliant red stripe down the sleeve that warned hunters he wasn’t a target—and he wasn’t sure, counting the problems with the neighbors, that he wanted to be that conspicuous an object in the brush.

  He laid down the plain brown one he was wearing, instead—leather, and comfortable for Taiben’s hall, seeing that end-of-season evenings often turned cold, and human bones chilled faster than atevi’s.

  “Bren-ji? One heard you were questioning arrangements?”

  Jago’s voice. He turned, stood there with the jacket in his hands—Jago—was different to him. He wasn’t seeing her the way he’d always seen her, not a hair different, not a hint of impropriety in her being here, or in her appearance, or his, but suddenly the room was too close, the air was too warm, and a human brain with too much to do was all of a sudden trying to think about details in the circuits left over from a very stupid whiteout in the fore-brain.

  “I—uh, I wanted to know what time we were leaving. In the morning.” The paidhi, the source of international communications, wasn’t doing well. “Tano found my answer.”

  “There was a phone call?”

  “I—uh, yes. There was.”

  “Bren-ji—is something wrong?”

  “I—no. No. Everything’s on schedule.”

  Jago stood there a moment. Then shut the door, shutting them both in.

  He felt a sense of panic. And knew it showed. He wasn’t about to throw Jago out. Or to request a good friend to leave.

  Which wasn’t what she was, dammit, he wasn’t thinking.

  “I’ve made you uneasy,” Jago said. “Bren-paidhi, I was stupidly mistaken. I apologize. I most sincerely apologize.”

  He didn’t know what to say. He stood there. And Jago said, with great correctness, “Excuse the intrusion, nand’ paidhi,” and turned quietly to go.

  “I—” he said, in all the fluency he had. “Jago.”

  “Nand’ paidhi?” She had her hand on the latch. He wanted and didn’t want. He relied on Banichi and Jago for life and death. But Jago had touched off something—so tangled in his psyche he didn’t know what to do with it, didn’t know where to take hold of it, even what to call it.

  “Jago—”

  She was still waiting. He didn’t know how many I’s he’d started with, but he knew it was far too many for anyone’s patience.

  “Nothing,” he said desperately, “nothing could make me distrust you, in any way. You—” Breath was not coming easily. “You affected me very profoundly—that’s all I know how to say. I’m not sure what you think. I’m not sure what I think. I can’t think at the moment, there’s just too much, too much going on. There will be for a while. —Do I make any sense at all? It’s not you. It’s me. I’m not—just not at my most stable, Jago.”

  He ran out of words. Jago didn’t seem to find any immediately, and the silence went
on, so deep he could all but hear his heart beat.

  “Have I angered you?” Jago asked then.

  “No.” A vehement shake of his head. But it wasn’t an atevi gesture. “In no way. Most emphatically not.”

  “Disturbed you?”

  “Yes.”

  Jago bowed her head and seemed to take that for dismissal.

  “Jago.” He was floundering. Clinical was all he knew how to be, to save them both. “It’s the friend business. It’s that word. We say we love. Even when we need. When we need, it’s something not very productive. It’s a lot of human damn wiring, Jago-ji. Expectations. —Like man’chi. How do you stop it logically? —And I can’t know—maybe you’re just curious. Maybe just—nothing more than that. Maybe a lot more serious than that. I don’t know.”

  “One meant well,” Jago said, still with that unbreakable control. “Evidently one was very wrong.”

  “No. I just—Jago, God, I’m embarrassed as hell. I just want you back. The way things were. For a while. Just that—if that doesn’t offend you.”

  “No,” she said.

  “No, it can’t be the same? Or no, it doesn’t offend you?”

  “No, nand’ paidhi. I am not offended. I find no possible way to be offended.”

  “Can I say—at least—I’m very attracted?”

  She laughed, a jolt, a startlement. “You can say so,” she said. “One takes no offense, paidhi-ji.”

  “Is it always No, from this point? Or maybe someday?”

  “What does the paidhi think?”

  The paidhi was shaky in the knees. It wasn’t his habit. It wasn’t his style, not with Barb, not with anybody else. He felt like a total fool. And stood there with the coat in his hands. “The paidhi knows when he can’t translate. When he hasn’t got a hope of translating. The paidhi thinks he’s extremely damn fortunate you’re not mad at him.”

  A shy look he’d rarely seen from Jago. A nervous laugh he never had. “By no means. If you—”

  But the damn pocket-com went off at that very moment. Jago pulled it from her belt, held it to her ear, and frowned.

  “Fourteen,” she said, probably—he’d grown wiser in the ways security communicated—her station number, acknowledging hearing a message.

  Then: “If you wish to change clothes,” she said, “hurry. We’re moving out. Now.”