Inheritor

by C. J. Cherryh

  The operator knew that number wouldn't find anybody able to authorize anybody at that hour. He could try Shawn Tyers at home. But he didn't want to compromise Shawn, and he had sure knowledge that his calls were monitored at several points: in this apartment, with Tabini's security, with Mospheiran National Security and God knew, it was possible there were leaks with this particular operator. George's friends were gaining increasing access through appointments to various offices, just a quiet erosion of people he used to be able to reach.

  And it did no good, no good at all to lose his temper. He wasn't out of names, if that old list was the one she was going by. There was one woman, one woman he'd dated in time past and who had gone on the list, before he and Barb had almost gotten to talking about a future together. Sandra Johnson was a date, for God's sake, not a resource for a Foreign Office field officer in trouble. But she was a contact — to prove he could get someone.

  "Sandra Johnson."

  "Yes, sir."

  He shut his eyes and blocked out the atevi world. Imagined a pretty woman in an ivory satin jacket, candlelight, Rococo's, and a quiet chat in her apartment. Nice place. Plants everywhere. She named them. Clarence, and Louise. Clarence was a spider plant, one of those smuggled bits that the colonists weren't supposed to have taken, and some had, and spider plants were common, but no ecological threat. Louise was a djossi vine, and he'd said — he'd said she should set it on her balcony. They liked more light. The paidhi knew. They grew all over Shejidan.

  The phone was ringing. And ringing.

  Please, God, let someone pick it up.

  "Hello?"

  "Sandra? This is Bren. Don't hang up."

  "Bren Cameron?" Justifiably she sounded a little shocked. "Are you on the island?"

  "No. No, I'm calling from Shejidan. I apologize. Sandra. I —" Words were his stock in trade and he couldn't manage his tongue or his wits, or even think of the social, right words he wanted in Mosphei'. It was all engineering and diplomatese. "I've run out of resources, Sandra. I need your help. Please don't hang up. Listen to me."

  "Is something wrong?"

  God. Is something wrong? He suffered an impulse to laugh hysterically. And didn't. "I'm fine. But —" What did he say? They're harassing my family and threatening their lives? He'd just put Sandra Johnson on the list, just by calling her. "Sandra, how are you?"

  "Fine. But —"

  "But?"

  "I just — was rather surprised, that's all."

  "Sandra, my mother's in the hospital or she's home. I can't get the hospital to admit she's in there. Probably it's a security precaution, but the clerk's being an ass. I know —" God, he had no shame. Nor scruples. "I know I have no right to call up like this and hand you a problem, but I can't get through and I'm worried about her. Can you do some investigating?"

  "Bren — I —"

  "Go on."

  "I know she's there. I know they've got police guards. It's in the news. Bren, a lot of people are mad at you."

  "I imagine they are. But what in hell's it doing in the news about my mother and police guards?"

  "Bren, they've thrown paint on the apartment building. Somebody shot out the big windows in the front of the State Department last week. You're why."

  He felt a leaden lump in his stomach, "I don't get all the news."

  "Bren, just — a lot's changed. A lot's changed."

  The operator, he was sure, was still listening. The call was being recorded.

  "Shouldn't have bothered you."

  "Bren, I'm a little scared. What are you doing over there? What have you done?"

  "My job," he said, and all defenses cut in.

  "They say you're turning over everything to the atevi."

  "Who says? Who says, Sandra?"

  "Just — on the news, they say it. People call the television station. They say it."

  "Has the President said anything?"

  "Not that I know."

  "Well, then, not everything's changed," he said bitterly. Eight days out of the information flow, maybe. But by what Banichi had said about things not getting to Tano's level, with Banichi gone for six months, God alone knew what hadn't gotten to him.

  And common sense now and maybe instincts waked among security-conscious atevi told him he'd both made a grave mistake in getting on the phone and that he'd learned nothing in this phone call that he could do a damn thing about. "So now that I've called you, you could be in danger. How's your building security?"

  "I don't know if we have any." It was half-laughing. Half-scared. Life on Mospheira didn't take crime into account. There wasn't much. There weren't threats. Or had never been, until the paidhi became a public enemy. " What do I do? "

  "Get a pen. I'm going to give you instructions, Sandra."

  "For what? What's going on?"

  "Because they're threatening my family, they're threatening my brother and his wife and kids, and Barb got married to get an address they couldn't access. I shouldn't have called your number."

  "You're serious. This isn't a joke you're making."

  "Sandra, I was never more serious. Have you got a pen?"

  "Yes."

  "I want you to go to Shawn Tyers. You know who he is. His apartment is 36 Asbury Street."

  "The Foreign Secretary."

  "Yes." The line popped. His heart beat hard. He knew he was about to lose the connection and that it was not an accident. The window he had was closing, the operator had found someone of rank enough to terminate the phone call because they'd gotten into things they didn't want flowing across the strait, and he'd just put Sandra in real danger. "Leave Clarence and Louise on their own, go to a neighbor and get them to take you directly to Shawn. Wait in his lobby all night if you have to. Don't let them arrest you." This was a woman almost entirely without experience in subterfuge. And if they were monitoring, the people who would harm her were listening to what he was telling her to do. "This instant. I'm serious. You're in danger, now. They're listening on the line, Sandra. These people could send the taxi if you call one. Get help from people you know or don't know, but not taxis and not government. Get to Shawn. Now! Move fast! Don't go on the street alone — and don't trust the police!"

  "Oh, my God, Bren. What's going on? What are you involved in? Why did you call me? "

  It's not me, he started to say.

  But the line went dead.

  He stood leaning against the desk. He was gripping the phone so hard his hand was numb. He hung up the receiver knowing he commanded any security help he wanted on this side of the strait — and couldn't get through to his own mother on the other.

  Deana Hanks was broadcasting messages to incite sedition on the mainland. That no one stopped her meant no one knew or that no one could get an order to stop her.

  That no one in the atevi government including Tabini had told him about Deana meant that, Banichi's protestations aside, either no one had told Banichi or Banichi was covering something — Banichi ordinarily wouldn't lie to him, but there were circumstances in which Banichi would lie to him. Definitely.

  He'd thrown in the bit about the damn houseplants to cue Sandra he was speaking on his own and now he didn't know but what she didn't take it as some joke.

  The stakes had gotten higher, and higher.

  And higher.

  Maybe he was just so out of touch he was a paranoid fool. But what he could feel through the curtain of security that lay between Mospheira and the Western Association scared him, it truly scared him.

  He straightened, met the grave face of an atevi servant who'd, probably passing in the hall, seen him in the office and seen his attitude and paused. Or his own security had sent her. God knew.

  "Do you wish anything, nand' paidhi?"

  He wished a great deal. He said, for want of anything he could do, "I'd like a glass of shibei, nadi. Would you bring it, please?"

  "Yes, nand' paidhi."

  Instant power. More than fifty people completely, full-time dedicated to his wants a
nd needs.

  And he couldn't safeguard Sandra Johnson and two stupid houseplants he'd put into grave danger.

  God! Led by his weaknesses and not by his common sense, he'd made that phone call. Why the hell had he felt compelled to push the matter and try to get information he knew damned well was being withheld from him by the whole apparatus of the Mospheiran government and the rot inside it?

  What did he think was going to respond when he kicked it to see whether, yes, it was malevolent, and widespread, and it had everything he loved in its grip.

  The drink arrived in the hands of a tall, gentle, non-human woman, who gracefully offered it on a silver platter, and went away with a whisper of slippered footfalls and satin coat, and left a hint of djossi flower perfume in her wake.

  He finished the drink and set down the glass. The spring breeze blew through the sitting room, chill with spring and fresh with scents of new things.

  He'd had a nice, tame little single-room apartment down the hill, before he'd come to this borrowed, controversy-dominated palace.

  He'd had glass doors that opened onto a pretty little garden he'd shared with a Bu-javid cook and several clerks, trusted personnel, persons with immaculate security clearances. Never any noise, never any fuss. Two servants, a small office with no secretary at all.

  But someone had broken into his little apartment one rainy night, whether a person of Tabini's staff setting him up, or whether truly an attempt on his life, he didn't know nor expected the persons who might have been responsible ever to say. He would never ask, for his part, since it seemed vaguely embarrassing to say it to persons who if they were human would be friends.

  Persons whose turning against him would mean he'd have only duty left.

  He was aware of a presence in the shadowed hall. He thought it was the servant spotting an empty glass. They were that good, sometimes seeming to have radar attuned to that very last sip, to whisk the glass away, perhaps zealous to restore the perfection of numbers in the room, perhaps that the night staff had to account for the historic crystal. He had no idea and had never asked.

  He turned his head and saw Jago standing there.

  "Are you well, Bren-ji?"

  "Yes." It was perhaps a lie he told her. He wasn't even sure.

  Perhaps Jago wasn't sure, either. She walked in and stood where he could see her without turning his head.

  "Is there trouble?" he asked her.

  "Only a foolish boy who tried to ride the subway to the hill. One can't reach the hill by the subway without appropriate passes, of course. But he carried identification. When he argued with the guards it rang alarms."

  "The boy from Our?"

  "He's very persistent."

  "He's not hurt, is he?"

  "No, no, Bren-ji. But he is becoming a great nuisance. Three letters today —"

  "Three?"

  "Felicitous three." Jago held up three fingers. "Two would have been infelicitous. He was therefore compelled to send a third."

  He had to smile. And to laugh.

  "One did," Jago said slowly, "listen — to your phone call, Bren-ji."

  It was an admission of many things. And she came to him with that as an implied question.

  There was a word, osi, that had no clear etymology, no relationship to any other word. But when one said it, one wanted a teacup full or a piece of information amplified to its greatest possible extent. He said it now, and Jago said quietly:

  "This woman. One doesn't recall her."

  "Sandra Johnson? A woman I saw socially, before you came." There was no atevi word for dated. Or if there was, it was a set of words for social functions including bed-partners: he was definitely on shaky ground with that vocabulary.

  And with Jago. They'd been — interested in each other. Curious, on one level. Aware — on another — that, being what they were, who they were, things being as they were, they couldn't trifle with one another.

  The air was suddenly charged. He didn't know whether she felt it. He'd been celibate for almost a year, now, in a household full of women all of whom, including women he knew had grandchildren, acted as if they found him attractive. He'd met with too many memories tonight. He'd endangered a woman he'd slept with, trying to reestablish a connection he'd no business trying to activate. He might even have killed Sandra Johnson. He didn't think things had gone that far on Mospheira, on an island where in very many communities people didn't lock their doors — but he was afraid for Sandra, and felt a guilt for that phone call that wouldn't make an easy pillow tonight.

  He wanted —

  He wanted someone to fill the silence.

  Someone like Barb. Sandra hadn't been that way for him. A fun evening. A light laughter. No talk about the job.

  But to Barb, he'd told more than he should. And when it was clear he wasn't coming back any time soon, and when his actions had alienated a lot of the population of Mospheira, she'd married a government computer expert, whose clearances and whose indis-pensability to the State Department could assure her safety in ways he couldn't.

  Jago walked closer to his chair. Was there, in the warmth and scent and solid blackness of an ateva close at hand.

  "I should have shot Hanks-paidhi," Jago said, stating fact as she saw it.

  "Possibly it was the right idea," he said, and Jago's hand rested on his on the arm of the antique chair.

  "Nadi-ji."

  His heart beat in panic. Sheer panic. He thought of moving his hand to signal no. But a sexual No wasn't what he wanted either, not forever.

  "If a person associates with the powerful," Jago said in that rich, even voice, the low timbre only an ateva could achieve, "there are penalties."

  "But they never expected the paidhi's job to be that, Jago-ji. I didn't. I know you think Barb failed me. But there is no Guild for her to appeal to. My family has no clan, no power. She went to a man whose connections in the government are more secure than mine."

  "And will Barb-daja help you?"

  "If I could get to her —"

  "What would she have done?"

  "Checked on my mother."

  "And rescued her?"

  "Barb can't, Jago-ji. She has nowhere to go. She has no one to call on. There is no Guild. There's none for Sandra Johnson. There is no help."

  "I have heard of po-lis."

  "Some of them aren't reliable. And if you're not inside the system you don't know which ones."

  Jago took back her hand. And pulled up a chair. "Is this Sandra John-son knowledgeable of such things?"

  "Shawn might help her. The Foreign Secretary. He might put her under some sort of protection. I don't know."

  "And his superior? What of the President?"

  He was suddenly looking not into the face of an ateva he trusted, but an Assassin, a guard in the man'chi of the aiji of Shejidan, asking things he had never quite admitted, like the real inner workings of decision-making. God knew and Tabini knew the President was not quick; but a helpless figurehead, he hadn't quite admitted to.

  Matters on the island had never been quite this desperate, either, unless he was a total fool and had scared himself into some paranoid fancy. Shooting — at the State Department windows.

  "Jago-ji. I'm not sure. I don't know who's holding power. Hanks is using a radio transmitter, on an island. Tell me they can't find her and stop her. They know who's doing it. There isn't but one person on Mospheira who can speak fluent Ragi! They aren't that stupid, Jago-ji! Stupid, but not that stupid."

  "If I see her I will shoot her, Bren-paidhi. This is a person doing harm to the aiji's interests and to you."

  What did he say? Yes?

  "I regard you highly," was what he found to say in Ragi. And what else could he say? Something that evaded moral connection to the ateva she was, and the plain truth and good sense she offered? "You were right, Jago-ji. You were right."

  "Yes," she said quietly. "I think so." She rose and towered against the light, and walked to the door. "Banichi says go to bed and slee
p."

  "Does he?" He was surprised. Then amused at the source of it. At both sources.

  "Good night, nand' paidhi."

  "Jago-ji." He almost — almost — asked her to stay. No matter Banichi's admonition. But she wouldn't disobey that order, and he shouldn't pose that conflict to her moral sense.

  "I am also," she added, "right about Barb-daja. The direction of her man'chi is not to you. She sought another place. — Shall I secure the computer?"

  He turned it over to her, and walked out with her. But she went to the left, to the security station, and he went to the right, toward his bedroom, where servants converged and helped him to undress.

  Jago's shots were generally on target. Even the man'chi business, which had no human application.

  But it was true. He and Barb had done each other a lot of damage, the same as he'd done tonight to Sandra.

  Barb hadn't — hadn't told him about things. Barb had carried all the load until she couldn't carry it any more. And he loved her for that.

  But she'd acted at the last to save herself. Jago saw that part, too. Practical of Barb. Maybe even essential.

  But — dammit — she could have just moved in with Paul. She didn't have to make it legal. That said something final to the man she'd been illegal with for years.

  It said — a lot of what an ateva had just observed. The drift was in a direction other than toward him.

  He sat down on the immaculate bed, and turned out the light and pulled the covers over himself.

  He was more tired than he'd thought.

  Worried about Sandra. Worried about his mother and his brother, but he'd been worried so long he'd worn out the nerves to worry. Things just were. Somebody had thrown paint on his mother's building and the landlord was no doubt mad; it was in the news it was so notorious and somehow the atevi of the Messengers' Guild who monitored such things hadn't told Tano who consequently hadn't told him.

  But Banichi indicated they hadn't told Tabini certain things, too, and that heads were about to be, the atevi word, collected.

  He couldn't help matters. He knew that now. He sank into that twilight state in which a hundred assassins could have poured through the windows and he'd have directed them sleepily to the staff quarters.