“Aren’t we taking the rail?”
“There’s no rail to Malguri,” Banichi said. “One goes by car.”
One wasn’t supposed to go by car. There wasn’t supposed to be a car link between an airport and any end destination, no matter how rich one was: the nearest rail link was supposed to be the rule … and was there no rail at all between Malguri and the airport?
The designation on the van, written in large letters right above the driver, was, Maidingi Air … and did an airline vehicle regularly serve private destinations? They weren’t licensed to be a ground transport.
Maybe it was a special authorization security had. But was it that dire an emergency?
“Are we afraid to hire a bus?” he asked, and indicated, right in front of them, and clear to be read, Maidingi Air.
“There’s no bus to Malguri.”
“It’s the law. There’s supposed to be a hired bus.…”
The van caught an abrupt turn and threw him against Jago’s arm.
Jago patted his leg, and he folded his arms and sank back to reassemble the pieces of his dignity and his self-possession, while the thunder rumbled.
There were places where the local tech hadn’t caught up to the regulations. There were places with economic exceptions.
But the aiji’s own holding damned sure wasn’t one. Tabini couldn’t hire a bus? Or the bus to Maidingi Township didn’t serve Malguri, when it was right next door? The aiji was supposed to set an example of environmental compliance. Kabiu. Good precedent. Correct behavior. Appearances.
Where in hell was the estate, that the town bus couldn’t get them there?
Gravel scattered under the tires, and the van jolted onto a road in which gray void was on one side and a mountain on the other. The road ceased to be Improved in any sort, and one recalled the vetoes of one’s predecessor, overriding the access highway bill from the high villages—and one’s own assertion to the aiji, mildly tipsy, that such would ‘undermine the rail priority,’ that the appeal from the mountain villages was a smoke screen—the aiji had taken to that expression with delight, once he understood it—covering provincial ambitions and leading provincial aijiin to sedition.
It was the identical argument his predecessors had used—he had been queasy about the paranoid logic it encouraged in Tabini, from an ethical standpoint—but Tabini had seemed to accept it as perfectly reasonable atevi logic, and the paidhi didn’t vary from his predecessors’ arguments for mere human reasons: the paidhi adhered to what had worked with past administrations, argued by atevi logic, unless he had very carefully worked out a change and passed it by council.
And this road was evidently the by-product of that logic, founded on his predecessor’s vetoes over the highway system, and sustained on his own.
No bus. No pavement
He skiied, on his vacations. He was a passionate skiier. He had been on interesting roads, up Mt. Allan Thomas, on Mospheira.
Paved roads. Thank you. Going down a mountain on skis was one thing.
This …
… vehicle was not designed to climb. It slipped on the turns.
He clutched his computer to keep it from sliding to the rear of the van. He thought he might change his recommendation on the non-township roads proposal.
The van ground its way for what felt like well over an hour up rainwashed gravel, whined and slipped and struggled around an uphill serpentine curve with a spit of gravel from beneath the wheels at the last. Gray space and driving rain filled the windows on every side but one. The van lurched upward into void, tilted, and Bren held to the seat white-knuckled with his free hand, Jago swaying into him, with what might be Lake Maidingi or empty air beside and below and in front of him—he didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to imagine.
How long would it take searchers to find them if a tire slipped off the rain-washed edge, and they plunged off into the lake?
Another jolt—a slip. “God!”
The driver gave him a startled look in the rearview mirror that took his attention from the wheel. Bren clamped his mouth shut after that. But Banichi and the driver started a conversation—during which the driver kept looking to the back seat to make his points.
“Please, nadi!” Bren said.
Gravel went over the edge. Their right tires bridged a washout and narrowly missed the rim. He was certain of it.
Then, around that curve, curtained in rain, a mass of shadow towered on the gray brink. Stone towers and spires rose there, in a rain-crystaled spatter on the glass—he couldn’t tell where the road was, now, except the rattle of gravel under the tires assured him they were still on it.
“Malguri,” Banichi said in his deep tones.
“A fortress of the forty-third century,” the driver said, “the architectural jewel of this province … maintained under the provincial trust, an autumn residence of the aiji-major, currently of the aiji-dowager…”
He sat and hugged his computer case and watched as the towers grew larger in the windshield, as they gathered detail out of the universal gray of the mist, the lake below, and the clouds … then acquired colors, the dark gray of stone and the rain-soaked drip of heraldic banners from the uppermost tiers.
He was used to atevi architecture, was accustomed to antiquity in the City, and found it in the customs of the aiji’s hall, but this place, bristling with turrets and castellations, was not the style of the Landing, like so much of Shejidan. The date the driver had given them was from long, long before humans had ever come into the system, from long before there had ever been a strayed ship or a space station—before—he made a fast re-reckoning—there’d been a human in space at all.
The wipers cleared the scene in alternate blinks, a world creating and recreating itself out of primeval deluge as wooden gates yawned for them and let them inside, onto a stone-paved road that curved beneath a broad, sheltering portico, where the rain only scarcely reached.
The van stopped. Banichi got up and opened the door from inside, on a darkly shadowed porch and open wooden doors. A handful of atevi hastened out of that warm, gold-lit darkness to meet the van—in casual dress, all of them, which fit what Bren knew of country life. Except the boots, it was attire appropriate to a hunting lodge like Taiben, which Bren supposed that Malguri was, in fact, considering the wild land around it … probably very good hunting, when some more energetic member of the aiji’s family was in residence.
He followed Banichi out of the van, computer in hand, reckoning, now that he saw the style of the place, that there might even be formal hunts while they were here, if the staff lent itself to entertaining the guests. Banichi and Jago would certainly be keen for it. He wouldn’t: tramping through dusty weeds, getting sunburn, and staring at his supper down a gun barrel was not his favorite sport. He was concerned for his computer in the cold mist that was whirling about them, sucked under the portico by the drafts; and he was more than anxious to conclude the welcome and get in out of the wet.
“The paidhi,” Banichi was saying, and Banichi laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Bren Cameron, the close associate of Tabini-aiji, the very person, give him good welcome …” It was the standard formality. Bren bowed, murmured, “Honor and thanks,” in reply to the staff’s courtesies, while Jago banged the van door shut and dismissed the driver. The van whined off into the storm and somehow the whole welcoming party advanced, by degrees and inquiries into the aiji’s health and well-being, across the cobbles toward the main doors—thank God, Bren thought. A backward glance in response to a question spotted an antique cannon in the paved courtyard, through veils of rain; a forward glance met gold, muted light coming through the doors on a wave of warmer air.
It was a stone-paved hall, with timbered and plastered walls. The banners that hung from the time-blackened rafters looked centuries old themselves, with their muted colors and complex serpentine patterns of ancient writing that, no, indeed, the paidhi didn’t know. He recognized Tabini’s colors, and the centermost banner had Tabini
’s personal emblem, the baji on a red circle, on a blue field. There were weapons on every wall—swords and weapons the names of which he didn’t know, but he’d seen them in the lodge at Taiben, with similar hides, spotted and shaded, pinned on walls, thrown over chairs that owed nothing to human designs.
Banichi seized him by the shoulder again and made further introductions, this time to two servants, both male, introductions which required another round of bows.
“They’ll take you to your rooms,” Banichi said. “They’ll be assigned to you.”
He’d already let the names slip his attention. But, was on his tongue to say, —but what about Algini and Tano, on their way from the airport? Why someone else?
“Excuse me,” he said, and bowed in embarrassment. “I lost the names.” The paidhi was a diplomat, the paidhi didn’t let names get away like that, even names of servants—he wasn’t focussing, even yet, asking himself whether these servants were ones Banichi knew, or Jago did, or how they could trust these people.
But they bowed and patiently and courteously said their names again: Maigi and Djinana, honored to be at his service.
Dreadful beginning, with atevi trying to be polite to him. He was being pushed and shoved into places he didn’t know in a culture already full of strangenesses, and he was overwhelmed with the place.
“Go with them,” Banichi said gently, and added something in one of the regional languages, to which the servants nodded and bowed, regarding him with faces as impassive as Banichi’s and Jago’s.
“Nand’ paidhi,” one said. Maigi. He had to get them straight.
Maigi and Djinana, he said over and over to himself, as he followed them across the hall, through the archway, and to the foot of bronze-banistered stone stairs. He realized of a sudden they had just passed out of the sight of Jago and Banichi, but Banichi had said go, Banichi evidently believed they were trustworthy. He had no wish to insult the servants twice by doubting them.
So it was up the stairs, into the upper floor of a strange house ruled by a stranger old woman. The servants he followed talked together in a language the paidhi didn’t know, and the place smelled of stone and antiquity. Plastering didn’t exist in these wooden-floored upper halls, which, he supposed, were for lesser guests. Pipes and wires ran across ceilings clearly ancient, and bare tungsten-based bulbs hung in brackets festooned by aged copper-centered insulated wire, covered with dust.
This is Tabini’s hospitality? he asked himself. This is how his grandmother lives?
He didn’t believe it. He was offended, outright offended, and somewhat hurt, that Tabini sent him to this dingy, depressing house, with out-of-date plumbing and God knew what kind of beds.
They were running out of hallway. Two huge doors closed off the end. More hiking, he supposed glumly, into some gloomy cubbyhole remote from the activity of the dowager and her staff.
It probably wasn’t Tabini’s fault. It might be the dowager had countermanded Tabini’s arrangements. Grandmother might not want a human in her house, and might lodge him under a stairs or in a storeroom somewhere. Banichi and Jago would object when they found out. Grandmother would take offense, Tabini would take offense …
The servants opened the doors, on carpet, a spacious sitting room and furniture … God, gilt, carved over every surface, carpets that weren’t, Bren suddenly realized, mill-produced. The soft, pale light came from a large, pointed-arched window with small rectangular panes, bordered in amber and blue panes—a beautiful frame on a gray, rain-spattered nothing.
“This is the paidhi’s reception room,” Maigi said, as Djinana opened another, side door and showed him into an equally ornate room with a blazing fireplace—illicit heating source, he said to himself in a remote, note-taking, area of his brain; but the forebrain was busy with other details, the heads and hides and weapons on the walls, the carved wooden furniture, the antique carpet with the baji-naji medallions endlessly repeated, identical windows in the next room, which, though smaller, was no less ornate.
“The private sitting room,” Maigi said, then flung open the doors on a windowless side room of the same style, with a long, polished wood table from end to end. “The dining room,” Maigi said, and went on to point out the hanging bell-pull that would summon them, “Like that in the sitting room,” Maigi said, and drew him back to be assured he saw it.
Bren drew a deep breath. Everywhere it was stone walls and polished wooden floors, and dim lights, and gilt … a museum tour, it began to be, with Maigi and Djinana pointing out particular record heads of species three of which they confessed to be extinct, and explaining certain furnishings of historical significance.
“Given by the aiji of Deinali province on the marriage of the fourth dynasty aiji’s heir to the heir of Deinali, which, however, was never consummated, due to the death of the aiji’s heir in a fall from the garden walk.…”
What garden walk? he asked himself, determined, under the circustances, to avoid the fatal area himself.
It was the paranoia of the flight here working on his nerves. It must be.
Or it might be the glass eyes of dead animals staring at him, mute and helpless.
Maigi opened yet another door, on a bedroom far, far larger than any reasonable bedroom needed to be, with—Bren supposed at least it was a bed and not a couch—an affair on a dais, with spears upholding the curtains which mostly enfolded it, a bed smothered in skins of animals and set on a stonework dais. Maigi showed him another bellpull, and briskly led him on to yet—God!—a farther hall.
He followed, beginning to feel the entire matter of the paidhi’s accommodations ridiculously out of control. Maigi opened a side door to a stone-floored room with a hole in the floor, a silver basin, and a stack of linen towels. “The accommodation,” Maigi pronounced it, euphemismistically. “Please use the towels provided. Paper jams the plumbing.”
He supposed his consternation showed. Maigi took up a dipper from the polished silver cauldron, an ornate dipper, and poured it down the hole in the floor.
“Actually,” Djinana said, “there’s continual water action. The aiji Padigi had it installed in 4879. The dipper remains, for the towels, of course.”
It was genteel, it was elegant, it was … appalling, was the feeling he had about it. Atevi weren’t animals. He wasn’t. He couldn’t use this. There had to be something else, downstairs, perhaps; he’d find out, and walk that far.
Djinana opened a double door beyond the accommodation, which let into a bath, an immense stone tub, with pipes running across the floor. “Mind your step, nadi,” Djinana said. Clearly plumbing here was an afterthought, too, and the volume of water one used for a single bath had to be immense.
“Your own servants will light the fires for you each evening,” Djinana said, and demonstrated that there was running water, while he absorbed that small advisement that Algini and Tano were not lost, his luggage might yet make it, and he might not be alone with Djinana and Maigi after all.
Meanwhile Maigi had opened up the boiler, which was mounted on the stone wall, and which had two pipes running into it from overhead, down the wall: the larger one had to be cold water entering the boiler and a hot water conduit carried it out and across to the tub; but he was puzzled by the second, thinner pipe—until he realized that small blue flame in the boiler compartment must be supplied by that smaller gauge pipe. Methane gas. An explosion waiting to happen. An asphyxiation, if the little flame went out and let gas accumulate in the bath.
My God, he thought, racking up violation after violation, several of them potentially lethal as the two servants led the way back through the accommodation and into the hall.
Had Tabini sent him here for safety? Now that he understood what some of these pipes and electric lines must be, he traced other after-thought installations in the ancient stonework, some of which he realized now were certainly carrying methane, throughout the apartments and elsewhere, others of which were an antique electric supply, a source of sparks.
The building was still standing. The wiring was very old. So were the pipes. Evidently the staff had been careful … thus far.
“We, of course, are at your service,” Maigi said as they walked. “Your own staff should be arriving soon. They’ll lodge in the servants’ quarters, too. One ring for them, for personal needs; two for us, for food, for adjustment in the accommodations. We serve Malguri itself, and of course, provide its hospitality in any special requirements the paidhi might have.”
Djinana led the way back to the sitting room—an expedition in itself—and taking a small leather-bound codex from a table, presented it to him along with a pen. “Please add your name to the distinguished guests,” Djinana requested of him, and, as he prepared to do so: “It would be a further distinction, nadi, if you’d sign in your own language. That’s never been, before.”
“Thank you,” he said, quite touched, actually, at the implication of genuine welcome in this shrine, and duly signed in atevi script and, with, ironically, less practice, in Mosphei’.
He heard thumping in the hall. He looked up.
“Doubtless your servants,” Maigi said, and a moment later saw Tano with two big boxes, headed in through the outer door, and, imperiling an antique table, through the reception room.
“Nand’ paidhi,” Tano said, out of breath, and rain-soaked, like the boxes. Djinana hastened to show Tano through into the bedroom, to save the furniture, Bren supposed—and hoped those boxes were his clothes, particularly his sweaters and middle-weight coat.
“Would the paidhi like tea?” Maigi asked, as a thump of the outer door announced some other arrival, probably Algini. A draft fluttered the fire in the fireplace, and immediately, true to his guess, Algini came through the sitting room, equally soaked, and managed to bow in transit, difficult with two huge boxes in his arms.
Everything he owned, he thought, remembering the pile of boxes they had loaded on the train—God, how long did they propose he stay here?
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