Convergence

by C. J. Cherryh

  “There are,” Rieni said. “And we also understand that the heir of the aishidi’tat should not retreat from threats. We only wish the heir to understand that little threats turn into disasters, given too much opportunity.”

  “The heir of the aishidi’tat understands those principles, nadiin. The heir of the aishidi’tat is aware he has a reputation for certain stupid actions, from which he learned, nadiin. He is not now a fool.”

  Silence again.

  “Take necessary precautions,” he said. And set down the cup. And he reminded himself he was not truly here to have a holiday. He was here to be noticed. And the news had left no doubt where he was.

  Which meant anybody disturbed by Uncle’s move was apt to know where he was, and it was not a time, indeed, to be a fool.

  Outside, in a stable hardly a stone’s throw from the back door, was his mecheita, which he had hardly had a chance to appreciate before the ash of Kadagidi had come drifting down from the heavens and nand’ Bren’s bus had shown up with bullet-holes.

  And they had all made a run for the capital. But not to retreat and hide.

  “So,” he said. “Thank you, nadiin-ji. Thank you for the warning. Thank you for your protection. I shall listen to advice. But this is what I am thinking: that I have to do as I would do without their threats, if that is what they are up to. If you have to call in more protection—call them.”

  “May we ask,” Rieni said, “that you do not defy them before mid-morning tomorrow. Your father will veto the nomination. That will be done at a certain hour. But a disturbance preceding that event would make it seem your father vetoed it because a threat against you and your great-uncle moved him to do so.”

  He understood that. He nodded. “After noon,” he said. “In the afternoon, we shall go riding. Spread that all about Taiben and Atageini.”

  “We can spread that report all the way to Shejidan,” Rieni said. “With a photo or two, discreetly sent to certain agencies. It will be on the news by noon.”

  • • •

  It was a soft bed, sheets light and comfortable, a wealth of pillows. A very little light came from the windows, and Boji slept, over in his cage, quiet, for the time, after an exciting day—for a parid’ja. And the rest of them.

  Everybody had rooms, two by two, as the Guild usually slept. There had been food enough, there was comfort enough.

  So it was not quite a holiday. He was not sure he had ever had a holiday.

  But the senior Guild was not so bad as he had feared. They were not stodgy old men. They were, in fact, thinking of things, doing things, and telling him things, finally, which was the important part.

  He could be scared, if he were out there only with his aishid, and they likely would be more scared than he was, if they had to protect him, with so many details they just were not used to thinking of.

  They had gotten the information from Taiben, that had run alarms all the way to Guild Headquarters and probably to Father’s office before they even got to Tirnamardi. And that was good. They had gotten up on the truckbed where they had a vantage to defend the bus if there had been a problem, and he should have suspected something when Antaro’s and Jegari’s parents had decided to ride up and camp near Tirnamardi’s gate . . .

  His senior aishid had certainly known what was going on, and given orders, and passed information everywhere it needed to go.

  They were not bad, he thought. They were not half as bad as he had thought they would be. He began to think—they might not be bad at all.

  The office of the paidhi-aiji

  The Bujavid

  Shejidan

  Currently to be reached at: Francis House, Port Jackson.

  Dear Chairman Koman:

  I have arrived under the auspices of the aishidi’tat, representing their interests on this visit. I have recently operated on a direct commission from the President of Mospheira conjointly with the one from Tabini-aiji, and I am pleased to say that I have collected materials which I shall be happy to provide regarding the recent encounter with the kyo.

  These materials are principally in Ragi, the language in which the kyo themselves chose to communicate.

  Sincerely,

  Bren Cameron,

  Paidhi for Tabini-aiji.

  He was tempted to add to that last paragraph . . . in light of which, I recommend that the study constantly crosscheck with Ragi, to avoid multiple layers of interpretation— but that stepped into Departmental authority to propose and dispose, and it would very surely likely provoke people he had no desire to deal with.

  He had sat down, before bed, to write a letter at least explaining his presence, and promising something the Department both wanted and dreaded—professionally speaking: a language they had never dealt with, a language that was going to upset the still-extant rules against voice communication in another language . . .

  The rules had made sense, two hundred years ago. They certainly made none now. But they still were producing graduates who read Ragi but who could not write or speak it. Could not pronounce it, in point of fact, let alone handle regional variants.

  He could deal with the University. That was the overarching entity that most of the time made sense.

  He had far more trouble dealing with the University’s Linguistics Department, which had never been at peace with his severance of close supervision, and with his decision, taken in the first week of his assignment, to speak Ragi and abandon close to two hundred years of policy . . . because the aiji he served was moved to talk to him.

  No, he was not greatly favored in the department that had created him. The retired paidhi, Wilson, had come at loggerheads with Tabini, been told to leave, and it had not been a happy departure from office—which, considering Wilson now sat on the Committee, and considering his replacement had immediately violated a few departmental rules, had led to an attempt at recall and more reprimands than one chose to count.

  And the general atmosphere hadn’t put relations with the Committee high on Bren’s list of things to do since he’d come back from Reunion. He’d thought he should do it. He’d several times thought he really should clarify his position for the Committee. He’d occasionally thought he should write a paper explaining to them that they never had actually understood the office to which they’d appointed him and all his predecessors . . . an atevi office, not a human one, but which the aiji had let them fill. He shouldn’t be exclusively their representative, as they’d wanted him to be: he shouldn’t take sides himself, or take instruction from them exclusively, or divulge everything he knew about Tabini. But that wasn’t the way they understood it, wasn’t the way they wanted it.

  Wanted or not, that was the way it had to be, because, among other difficulties of translation, they had never understood the atevi word paidhi. He represented the other side—whichever side, equally, fairly, and at whatever risk. He represented them to the aiji. He represented the aiji to them, want it or not.

  The aiji wanted what he wanted, and meant to have it, and it was the paidhi’s job, right now, to explain it in ways Mospheira would not misinterpret.

  Including the fact that the aiji was not going to tolerate the situation on the station another year.

  Well, duty done. Wilson’s closest ally, Koman, was now head of the Committee on Linguistics, the Old Guard, who had never trusted Tabini, was heading the committee that advised State on atevi affairs—and under its current structure, he didn’t have high hopes for the disposition of the kyo materials he would send over—because they would be re-interpreted through the departmental lens, which viewed the paidhi’s office as properly theirs to dispose, and the current paidhi as an inconvenience.

  In plain fact, he had notions of a restructuring of the all-powerful department, but that wouldn’t come from the bottom up—and bottom of the power structure, indeed, they considered him to be, as their appointee. The restructuring
he envisioned would have to come from the State Department, which regulated “foreign contact,” and as such, did have a hand in the way Linguistics dealt with situations.

  Once he’d become paidhi, and once Tabini had accepted him and refused any replacement, his attempted removal by the Committee had created a crisis, and in the crisis, he’d begun to be monitored directly not by the Committee but by State, specifically by a deputy officer of the Department of State, Shawn Tyers, before Shawn himself had climbed the ladder in State and then run for President. Shawn had become his contact—and his monitor and rock of sanity during those early days. While his scholarly responses, or lack of them, might infuriate the Committee for Linguistics, once he’d come under State’s direct supervision, they’d lost control of him, and couldn’t force him to give account to them any more than they could force him out of office. They didn’t understand it that way. But that had been the truth since the first attempt to unseat him.

  Now it wasn’t so much that Shawn was his official contact, but that Mospheira had, in Shawn, a head of state Tabini could work with—and work well with, through him, and even State had ceased to deal with the paidhi-aiji. His communications went straight to Shawn.

  The Committee’s rulebook had taken another heavy blow during Murini’s coup and his takeover of the atevi government. But the linguists, the ordinary translators within the department, that dealt with news and intelligence out of the mainland, had been what Mospheira had to work with in that two-year-long nightmare. State and Defense had overridden rules left and right to get contact with individuals on the mainland, and they had dealt with whomever they had been able to get on the continent. They had worked more or less directly with the Guild itself, on the coast, with whom they had to pass messages.

  And the translators had done admirably. The Department had every reason to be proud—if only they could see it not as a breach of policy, but as a move to a new age. That two-year period of cooperation had set a new tone—had won the gratitude of many interests on the mainland, and it was what they had to build on, if Linguistics could manage to unwind itself from its past, shake off the paralytic fear of another War of the Landing, and set to work on an entirely new basis.

  He didn’t want to offend them, personally or professionally. He truly didn’t want that, which was why he had sat down to write that letter as part of his first day on the island.

  He’d be patient, he’d be courteous—but he couldn’t go meekly back to fill out forms and deal with their procedural complaints, nor would any successor.

  He needed the Department to work with three youngsters who knew more colloquial Ragi than anybody on the Committee . . . but he had serious doubts that they were going to cope well with that concept.

  And kyo coming through Ragi? With the same three youngsters, children under the age of fourteen, knowing more kyo than anybody in the Department?

  He really, truly worried how they were going to deal with that.

  But he had to work with what existed. And he trusted State, which had fingers in the University, far more than he trusted Linguistics. And he trusted that State could still bring the figurative hammer down on Linguistics where they had to.

  He’d made the gesture, stated he had the materials they would expect him to have and intended to send them.

  He didn’t yet mention the youngsters, or the structure that would have to exist to accommodate them.

  He didn’t yet mention the advent of five thousand Reunioners, in which the Department also had a role to play.

  Most of all he didn’t suggest that the rules simply were not going to survive that encounter, assuming the Department did.

  6

  Dressing in the morning, one gazed into a mirror rimmed with gilt and silver flowers, and took one’s collar pin from Eisi on a crystal tray that sparkled more than it did.

  Antaro and the juniors had presented themselves in good order. Rieni and the seniors turned up a little later, immaculate, and Cajeiri drew a deep breath, looking at the reflection of black uniforms over his shoulder—at what would be his household for the rest of his life.

  It was a lot of people. A crowd of people. And he had not even accumulated a domestic staff. There was really no need of everybody attending him, and everybody could just trust Uncle’s own security and go to the lesser dining room for their own breakfast with no standing about and waiting.

  But how did he tell the seniors to go down to the staff breakfast table and leave him to the juniors, or tell his own aishid to leave him to the seniors’ care?

  And taking two escorts down to Great-uncle’s table, even in the large breakfast room—was just excessive, with Great-uncle’s own aishid in attendance. It would provide enough Guild in that room to overwhelm a Kadagidi assault—if there were Kadagidi apt to launch one any longer, which there were, apparently—not.

  It had been a quiet night. A night without alarms. Somewhere, far along a border Taibeni shared with Ajuri, somebody had trespassed, and the whole world had twitched in alarm—but that was yesterday. Taibeni were encamped outside the gate. A solid wall of escort was about to stand guard with Uncle’s guard during breakfast. It all seemed on a morning untroubled by alarms in the night—a bit excessive, for a breakfast in the heart of Tirnamardi, surrounded by hedges, space, and walls.

  He almost said, knowing it was futile—I could go down by myself. They were a crowd on the stairs, not a disorderly one, to be sure—but, walking the steps amid an escort of eight, he was a little embarrassed at the spectacle it presented.

  Then he thought—why am I here, but to show Uncle has Father’s support? And how shall I show his support but to make as much noise as I can? I am Father’s heir. I come with Father’s intent, and Father provided these senior Guild for exactly the reason that I am not to be inconspicuous in Uncle’s house.

  So he squared his shoulders and descended to the bottom of the stairs, preceded by the juniors, followed by the seniors—the simple practicality of the juniors knowing where the breakfast room was, and which way to turn.

  So a lot of things might quietly work that way, creating no special fuss, nobody being a fool . . .

  If their lord decided not to be one, on this trip.

  He walked into Great-uncle’s breakfast hall, a place that could seat twenty people easily, and Great-uncle stood up to welcome him this morning, with his own bodyguard along the wall at the head of the room.

  “Great-uncle,” he said, and bowed as his escort spread themselves about the foot of the room, to stand through breakfast and seek their own after, schedule permitting.

  Light was just breaking in the two tall windows. Great-uncle had spread a massive breakfast, and had all the lamps lit, helping the sun. Great-uncle was doing everything as if he had mani in residence . . . as if his guest truly were something other than nine years old. But Uncle knew how to authorize leaks out to the townships.

  Of course the servants would talk. Guild never did, but servants would: they would talk to relatives in the Atageini towns and villages, and the news would pick it up, how for the first time the Heir was making an official visit on his own—not just a boy on a visit, but as Father’s representative, with all his bodyguard—how he had arrived late because of the bridge repair, and how he behaved, every slightest hint of favor or disfavor to Great-uncle. It all would be gossiped, and picked up to be commented on. Father’s veto was going to be one piece of news today, but anybody would immediately understand that his presence with Uncle was no accident, and was meant to send signals.

  So he bowed again, settled at the other end of a table that could be three times as long, with extra pieces, and said, mani’s best tutelage, “I have waked in all sorts of places in the last several weeks, Great-uncle, and this is one of my favorite places in the world to wake up. Not to mention the breakfasts!”

  “Well, you are indeed welcome, Great-nephew, and we regret the delay with
the bridge. We sympathize, we quite sympathize. It tied us up for an hour on our own trip. How long may you stay?”

  “I would not want to inconvenience you, Uncle.”

  “Oh, you are no inconvenience. You are an exceedingly welcome guest. Three days, four, five. Please take the liberty of the house, whatever you wish. One was greatly disappointed that your great-grandmother had business to attend in the East, so I had only the merest sketch of events in the heavens. She reports your young guests had some little part in it. Are they well?”

  “They are quite well. And there are stories to tell. Which I shall.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  “And is my mecheita well?”

  “She is in excellent form, excellent form. She is making her way up the hierarchy. You may find her a little contentious—but I have every confidence you can manage.”

  “The Taibeni camp . . . I would like Antaro and Jegari to have a little time with their parents, who escorted us in last night. We might ride out that far, perhaps.”

  “Well, well, managing your Jeichido among my herd is one thing, but I would have a little anxiousness taking her in among the Taibeni.”

  There was not a word about Ajuri. And it was a fair caution, about mixing herds. He was a novice rider and Jeichido was a mecheita of high breeding and hot ambition.

  “I would not ride even a quiet mecheita into that herd, uncle. I know I am not good enough. But they might, if you would lend two. Or if we could call Taiben and contact them. They will surely have two to lend, if they were assured your permission . . .”

  “To come to the gate? Of course. And through it, if they wish. But likely they will prefer the open air. Indeed. I approve, nephew. I approve your good sense.”

  It would let Antaro and Jegari get whatever news had come in since yesterday. That was in the plan. He did not mention that. But it was part of the plan. Antaro and Jegari would get whatever detail existed. Father would veto the nomination. If there was going to be any fuss afterward, Antaro and Jegari would hear whatever Taiben heard.