Foreigner

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Nadi, a personal curiosity—and I’ve never had the paidhi at hand to ask: all these years you’ve been dealing out secrets. When will you be out of them? And what will you do then?”

  Odd that no one had ever asked the paidhiin that quite that plainly … on this side of the water, although God knew they agonized over it on Mospheira.

  And perhaps that was Cenedi’s own and personal question, though not the question, he was sure, which Cenedi had called him downstairs specifically to answer. It was the sort of thing an astute news service might ask. The sort of thing a child might … not a political sophisticate like Cenedi, not officially.

  But it was very much the sort of question he’d already begun to hint at in technical meetings, testing the waters, beginning, one hoped, to shift attitudes among atevi, and knowing atevi couldn’t go much farther down certain paths without developments resisted for years by vested interests in other departments.

  “Things don’t only flow one way across the strait, nadi. We learn from your scientists, quite often. Not to say we’ve stood still ourselves since the Landing. But the essential principles have been on the table for a hundred years. I’m not a scientist—but as I understand it, it’s the intervening steps, the things that atevi science has to do before the principles in other areas become clear—those are the things still missing. There’s materials science. There’s the kind of industry it takes to support the science. And the education necessary for new generations to understand it. The councils are still debating the shape of baffles in fuel tanks—when no one’s teaching the students in the schools why you need a slosh baffle in the first place.”

  “You find us slow students?”

  That trap was obvious as a pit in the floor. And damned right they’d expected atevi to pick things up faster—give or take aijiin who wouldn’t budge and committees that wouldn’t release a process until they’d debated it to death. An incredibly short path to flight and advanced metallurgy. An incredibly difficult one to get a damn bridge built as it needed to be to stand the stresses of heavy-hauling trains.

  “Extremely quick students,” he said, “interminable debaters.”

  Cenedi laughed. “And humans debate nothing.”

  “But we don’t have to debate the technology, nadi Cenedi. We have it. We use it.”

  “Did it bring you success?”

  Watch it, he thought. Watch it. He gave a self-deprecating shrug, atevi-style. “We’re comfortable in the association we’ve made. The last secrets are potentially on the table, nadi. We just can’t get atevi conservatives to accept the essential parts of them. Our secrets are full of numbers. Our numbers describe the universe. And how can the universe be unfortunate? We are confused when certain people claim the numbers add in anything but felicitous combination. We can only believe nature.” He was talking to Ilisidi’s seniormost guard, Ilisidi, who chose to reside in Malguri. Ilisidi, who hunted for her table—but believed in the necessity of dragonettes. “Surely, in my own opinion, not an expert opinion, nadi, someone must have added in what nature didn’t put in the equations.”

  It was a very reckless thing to say, on one level. On the other, he hadn’t said which philosophy of numbers he faulted and which he favored, out of half a dozen he personally knew in practice, and, human-wise, couldn’t do in his head. He personally wanted to know where Cenedi, personally, stood—and Cenedi’s mouth tightened in a rare amusement.

  “While the computers you design secretly assign unlucky attributes,” Cenedi said wryly. “And swing the stars in their courses.”

  “Not that I’ve seen happen. The stars go where nature has them going, nadi Cenedi. The same with the reasons for slosh baffles.”

  “Are we superstitious fools?”

  “Assuredly not. There’s nothing wrong with this world. There’s nothing wrong with Malguri. There’s nothing wrong with the way things worked before we arrived. It’s just—if atevi want what we know—”

  “Counting numbers is folly?”

  Cenedi wanted him to admit to heresy. He had a sudden, panicked fear of a hidden tape recorder—and an equal fear of a lie to this man, a lie that would break the pretense of courtesy with Cenedi before he completely understood what the game was.

  “We’ve given atevi true numbers, nadi, I’ll swear to that. Numbers that work, although some doubt them, even in the face of the evidence of nature right in front of them.”

  “Some doubt human good will, more than they doubt the numbers.”

  So it wasn’t casual conversation Cenedi was making. They sat here by the light of oil lamps—he sat here, in Cenedi’s territory, with his own security elsewhere and, for all he knew, uninformed of his position, his conversation, his danger.

  “Nadi, my predecessors in the office never made any secret how we came here. We arrived at this star completely by accident, and completely desperate. We’d no idea atevi existed. We didn’t want to starve to death. We saw our equipment damaged. We knew it was a risk to us and, I admit it, to you, for us to go down from the station and land—but we saw atevi already well advanced down a technological path very similar to ours. We thought we could avoid harming anyone. We thought the place where we landed was remote from any association—since it had no buildings. That was the first mistake.”

  “Which party do you consider made the second?”

  They were charting a course through ice floes. Nothing Cenedi asked was forbidden. Nothing he answered was controversial—right down the line of the accepted truth as paidhiin had told it for over a hundred years.

  But he thought for a fleeting second about the mecheiti, and about atevi government, while Cenedi waited—too long, he thought, to let him refuse the man some gain.

  “I blame the War,” he said, “on both sides giving wrong signals. We thought we’d received encouragement to things that turned out quite wrong, fatally wrong, as it turned out.”

  “What sort of encouragement?”

  “We thought we’d received encouragement to come close, encouragement to treat each other as …” There wasn’t a word. “Known. After we’d developed expectations. We went to all-out war after we’d had a promising beginning of a settlement. People who think they were betrayed don’t believe twice in assurances.”

  “You’re saying you weren’t at fault.”

  “I’m saying atevi weren’t, either. I believe that.”

  Cenedi tapped the fingers of one hand, together, against the desk, thinking, it seemed. Then: “An accident brought you to us. Was it a mistake of numbers?”

  He found breath scarce in the room, perhaps the oil lamps, perhaps having gone in over his head with a very well-prepared man.

  “We don’t know,” he said. “Or I don’t. I’m not a scientist.”

  “But don’t your numbers describe nature? Was it a supernatural accident?”

  “I don’t think so, nadi. Machinery may have broken. Such things do happen. Space is a vacuum, but it has dust, it has rocks—like trying to figure which of millions of dust motes you might disturb by breathing.”

  “Then your numbers aren’t perfect.”

  Another pitfall of heresy. “Nadi, engineers approximate, and nature corrects them. We approach nature. Our numbers work, and nature doesn’t correct us constantly. Only sometimes. We’re good. We’re not perfect.”

  “And the War was one of these imperfections?”

  “A very great one. —But we can learn, nadi. I’ve insulted Jago at least twice, but she was patient until I figured it out. Banichi’s made me extremely unhappy—and I know for certain he didn’t know what he did, but I don’t cease to value associating with him. I’ve probably done harm to others I don’t know about,—but at least, at least, nadi, at very least we’re not angry with each other, and we each know that the other side means to be fair. We make a lot of mistakes … but people can make up their minds to be patient.”

  Cenedi sat staring at him, giving him the feeling … he didn’t know why … that he had entered on ve
ry shaky ground with Cenedi. But he hadn’t lost yet. He hadn’t made a fatal mistake. He wished he knew whether Banichi knew where he was at the moment.

  “Yet,” Cenedi said, “someone wasn’t patient. Someone attempted your life.”

  “Evidently.”

  “Do you have any idea why?”

  “I have no idea, nadi. I truly don’t, in specific, but I’m aware some people just don’t like humans.”

  Cenedi opened the drawer of his desk and took out a roll of paper heavy with the red and black ribbons of the aiji’s house.

  Ilisidi’s, he thought apprehensively, as Cenedi passed it across the desk to him. He unrolled it and saw instead a familiar hand.

  Tabini’s.

  I send you a man, ‘Sidi-ji, for your disposition. I have filed Intent on his behalf for his protection from faceless agencies, not, I think, agencies faceless to you, but I make no complaint against you regarding a course of action which under extraordinary circumstances you personally may have considered necessary.

  What is this? he thought and, in the sudden, frantic sense of limited time, read again, trying to understand was it Tabini’s threat against Ilisidi or was he saying Ilisidi was behind the attack on him?

  And Tabini sent him here?

  Therefore I relieve you of that unpleasant and dangerous necessity, ‘Sidi-ji, my favorite enemy, knowing that others may have acted against me invidiously, or for personal gain, but that you, alone, have consistently taken a stand of principle and policy against the Treaty.

  Neither I nor my agents will oppose your inquiries or your disposition of the paidhi-aiji at this most dangerous juncture. I require only that you inform me of your considered conclusions, and we will discuss solutions and choices.

  Disposition of the paidhi? Tabini, Tabini, for God’s sake, what are you doing to me?

  My agents have instructions to remain hut not to interfere.

  Tabini-aiji with profound respect

  To Ilisidi of Malguri, in Malguri, in Maidingi Province…

  His hands shook. He tried not to let them. He read the letter two and three times, and found no other possible interpretation. It was Tabini’s handwriting. It was Tabini’s seal. There was no possible forgery. He tried to memorize the wording in the little time he reasonably had to hold the document, but the elaborate letters blurred in his eyes. Reason tried to intervene, interposing the professional, intellectual understanding that Tabini was atevi, that friendship didn’t guide him, that Tabini couldn’t even comprehend the word.

  That Tabini, in the long run, had to act in atevi interests, and as an ateva, not in any human-influenced way that needed to make sense to him.

  Intellect argued that he couldn’t waste time feeling anything, or interpreting anything by human rules. Intellect argued that he was in dire and deep trouble in this place, that he had a slim hope in the indication that Banichi and Jago were to stay here—an even wilder hope in the possibility Tabini might have been compelled to betray him, and that Tabini had kept Banichi and Jago on hand for a reason … a wild and improbable rescue …

  But it was all a very thin, very remote possibility, considering that Tabini had felt constrained to write such a letter at all.

  And if Tabini was willing to risk the paidhi’s life and along with it the advantage of Mospheira’s technology, one could only conclude that Tabini’s power was threatened in some substantial way that Tabini couldn’t resist.

  Or one could argue that the paidhi had completely failed to understand the situation he was in.

  Which offered no hope, either.

  He handed Cenedi back the letter with, he hoped, not quite so obvious a tremor in his hands as might have been. He wasn’t afraid. He found that curious. He was aware only of a knot in his throat, and a chill lack of sensation in his fingers.

  “Nadi,” he said quietly. “I don’t understand. Are you the ones trying to kill me in Shejidan?”

  “Not directly. But denial wouldn’t serve the truth, either.”

  Tabini had armed him contrary to the treaty.

  Cenedi had killed an assassin on the grounds. Hadn’t he?

  The confusion piled up around him.

  “Where’s Banichi? And Jago? Do they know about this? Do they know where I am?”

  “They know. I say that denial of responsibility would be a lie. But I will also own that we are embarrassed by the actions of an associate who called on a licensed professional for a disgraceful action. The Guild has been embarrassed by the actions of a single individual acting for personal conviction. I personally—embarrassed myself, in the incident of the tea. More, you accepted my apology, which makes my duty at this moment no easier, nand’ paidhi. I assure you there is nothing personal in this confrontation. But I will do whatever I feel sufficient to find the truth in this situation.”

  “What situation?”

  “Nand’ paidhi. Do you ever mislead us? Do you ever tell us less—or more—than the truth?”

  His hazard didn’t warrant rushing to judgment headlong—or dealing in on-the-spot absolutes, with a man the extent of whose information or misinformation he didn’t know. He tried to think. He tried to be absolutely careful.

  “Nadi, there are times I may know … some small technical detail, a circuit, a mode of operation—sometimes a whole technological field—that I haven’t brought to the appropriate committee; or that I haven’t put forward to the aiji. But it’s not that I don’t intend to bring it forward, no more than other paidhiin have ever withheld what they know. There is no technology we have that I intend to withhold—ever.”

  “Have you ever, in collaboration with Tabini, rendered additional numbers into the transmissions from Mospheira to the station?”

  God.

  “Ask the aiji.”

  “Have those numbers been supplied to you by the aiji?”

  “Ask him.”

  Cenedi looked through papers, and looked up again, his dark face absolutely impassive. “I’m asking you, nand’ paidhi. Have those numbers been supplied to you by the aiji?”

  “That’s Tabini’s business. Not mine.” His hands were cold. He worked his fingers and tried to pretend to himself that the debate was no more serious than a council meeting, at which, very rarely, the questions grew hot and quick. “If Tabini-aiji sends to Mospheira, I render what he says accurately. That’s my job. I wouldn’t misrepresent him, or Mospheira. That is my integrity, nadi Cenedi. I don’t lie to either party.”

  Another silence, long and tense, in which the thunder of an outside storm rumbled through the stones.

  “Have you always told the truth, nadi?”

  “In such transactions? Yes. To both sides.”

  “I have questions for you, in the name of the aiji-dowager. Will you answer them?”

  The walls of the trap closed. It was the nightmare every paidhi had feared and no one had yet met, until, God help him, he had walked right into it, trusting atevi even though he couldn’t translate the concept of trust to them, persisting in trusting them when his own advisors said no, standing so doggedly by his belief in Tabini’s personal attachment to him that he hadn’t called his office when he’d received every possible warning things were going wrong.

  If Cenedi wanted to use force now … he had no help. If Cenedi wanted him to swear that there was a human plot against atevi … he had no idea whether he could hold out against saying whatever Cenedi wanted.

  He gave a slight, atevi shrug, a move of one hand. “As best I can,” he said, “I’ll answer, as best I personally know the answers.”

  “Mospheira has … how many people?”

  “About four million.”

  “No atevi.”

  “No atevi.”

  “Have atevi ever come there, since the Treaty?”

  “No, nadi. There haven’t. Except the airline crews.”

  “What do you think of the concept of a paidhi-atevi?”

  “Early on, we wanted it. We tried to get it into the Treaty as a condition
of the cease fire, because we wanted to understand atevi better than we did. We knew we’d misunderstood. We knew we were partially responsible for the War. But atevi refused. If atevi were willing, now, absolutely I’d support the idea.”

  “You’ve nothing to hide, you as a people? It wouldn’t provoke resentment, to have an ateva resident on Mospheira, admitted to your councils?”

  “I think it would be very useful for atevi to learn our customs. I’d sponsor it. I’d argue passionately in favor of it.”

  “You don’t fear atevi spies any longer.”

  “I’ve told you—there are no more secrets. There’s nothing to spy on. We live very similar lives. We have very similar conveniences. You wouldn’t know the difference between Adams Town and Shejidan.”

  “I would not?”

  “We’re very similar. And not—” he added deliberately, “not that all the influence has come from us to you, nadi. I tell you, we’ve found a good many atevi ideas very wise. You’d feel quite at home in some particulars. We have learned from you.”

  He doubted Cenedi quite believed that. He saw the frown.

  “Could there,” Cenedi asked him, “regarding the secrets you say you’ve provided—be any important area held back?”

  “Biological research. Understanding of genetics. That’s the last, the most difficult.”

  “Why is that the last?”

  “Numbers. Like space. The size of the numbers. One hopes that computers will find more general acceptance among atevi. One needs computers, nadi, adept as you are in mathematics—you still need them. I confess I can’t follow everything you do in your heads, but you have to have the computers for space science, for record-keeping, and for genetics as we practice it.”

  “The number-counters don’t believe that. Some say computers are inauspicious and misleading.”

  “Some also do admit a fascination with them. I’ve heard some numerologists are writing software … and criticizing our hardware. They’re quite right. Our scientists are very interested in their opinions.”