Inheritor

by C. J. Cherryh

  "Four, five hundred years ago," Bren said, "before humans on this planet, atevi rode mechieti to war." He pointed to the rolling land ahead of them. "Five hundred riders could be just up there, close as the gardens to the apartment. You couldn't see them. That's why men keep riding ahead of the dowager. Ordinarily the mechieti don't like to do that — get ahead of the leader. But they do it for short rides out and back, looking to see the way is clear."

  Jase was listening. He caught the quick and worried glance at the horizons, and saw Jase's whole body come to a different state of tension. In that distracted moment Jase suddenly synched with the mechieta's moving and seemed to feel it.

  "That's how you ought to ride," Bren said, "Jase."

  Jase looked at him, lost his centering and found it again; and lost it.

  The fact Jase had somehow coped with being out here didn't mean Jase knew a thing, Bren thought, not about the mechieti, not about the concept of land, or tactics, or how to stay on or how to protect himself if someone did come up on them and mechieti reacted as mechieti would do. Politics and language and living in an apartment was what he'd taught Jase. It was all he'd taught Jase.

  "If the mechieti have to run," he said, "— in case they do." He changed languages and went rapid-fire. "The atevi riders stay on by balance. You just hunch down tight and low and hold to the saddle. It won't come off. Get as low as you can. If they can jump something they will; otherwise they can turn very fast, and if you're not low you'll fall off. Join his center of mass. All right? If he jumps, his head will come back, and if your face is too far forward he can knock you cold. If they jump, center your weight, lean forward, head down while he's rising, lean back while he's landing and duck down again. We're small. Nothing we do affects them as much as an ateva's weight. Don't pull on the rein and don't try to guide him. It can turn his head and blind him to the ground and kill you both. If you do nothing with the rein, he'll follow Ilisidi's mechieta come hell or high water."

  "Are we going to run?" Jase said. "From what?"

  "It's just an 'in case.'"

  Jase gave him one of those looks.

  "It's a possibility, nadi," Bren said, and then wished he hadn't said. He wished he'd said, To hell with you, and not shaved the meaning one more time. "You're not going to find absolutes in this situation. There aren't any. I'm sorry. I knew I was asking for a hard time up here when I turned matters over to other people. I knew last night things were getting complicated. I figured — maybe we'd get a chance to go down to the water. Somehow. And things might not even involve us."

  "Once we left the fortress," Jase said in Mosphei', "I knew we weren't going fishing."

  "Because you knew I'd lie? You don't know that."

  There was lengthy silence.

  Then Jase said, "We were still going fishing? All around us, people with weapons. People on radios. Hanks. We were going fishing."

  "Well, we will." It sounded lame even to him, in what he began to see as a long string of broken promises, broken dates, incomplete plans — not professional ones, but personal. He couldn't explain all that was going on. Jase didn't understand the motivations. And God knew what conclusions he'd draw.

  The silence persisted some distance more. He wasn't there for the moment. He was across a table from Barb. Barb was saying, When? When, really, Bren?

  "You really tell yourself we're going fishing," Jase said, "don't you?"

  "Jase, if I don't plan to do it, we'll damn sure never get there. At least," he added, beginning to be depressed, "if you plan a dozen trips, one happens."

  "Are all Mospheirans like you?"

  He'd like to think not. He liked to think, on the contrary, that he was better than the flaws that frustrated him in his countrymen. But it was an island full of people living their safe routines, their weekend trips to the mountains, their outings to the market, like clockwork, every week, sitting on a powder keg, electing presidenti who lived the same kind of lives and left decisions to their chief contributors rather than those with any knowledge or insight.

  Delusion played a large part in Mospheiran attitudes.

  Delusion that they had a spacecraft, or could build one, with no facility in which to do it.

  Delusion that they could fix their deficits when there was suddenly a great need and all their bets came due.

  Self-delusion to which, apparently, he was not immune.

  "Lifestyle," he said, with self-knowledge a bitter lump in his chest. "But I still do plan to go fishing, Jase."

  "Just not this trip."

  "Even this trip, dammit! Security alerts go on all the time. I live with it! In between times, I relax, if I can get a few hours. Nine tenths of the time nothing happens or it happens elsewhere and life goes on. If you've planned a fishing trip, it might be possible. We can rent the gear. And hire a boat."

  "It's a nervous way to live."

  "It is when you park a bloody huge ship over our heads and offer the sun, the moon, and the stars to whoever gets there first1 It makes the whole world a little anxious, Jase!"

  "Was life more peaceful before we came?"

  "Life was absolutely ordinary before you came. You've set the whole world on its ear. Don't you reckon that? Absolutely ordinary people's lives have been totally disrupted. Absolutely ordinary people have done things they'd never have done."

  "Good or bad?"

  "Maybe both."

  They rode a while more in silence. He watched Jago ahead of him, by no means ordinary, neither she nor Banichi.

  He loved Jago. He loved both of them.

  "A lot of both," he said.

  And a long while later he asked, "Why did the ship come back?"

  "Weren't we supposed to?"

  He thought about that a moment, thought about it and wondered about it and said to himself of course that was what the ship did and was supposed to do: go places between stars. And this was where other humans were, and why wouldn't it come here?

  But he always argued the other point of view — everyone's point of view: Barb's, his mother's, Jase's. He'd elaborated in his own mind Jase's half-given answers in the days when Jase hadn't been able to say much in Ragi and after that when the pressure mounted to get the engineering translation settled. They'd talked fluently about seals and heat shields. But when he'd asked, in Mosphei', as late as a handful of days before his tour, Where were you? Jase had drawn him diagrams that didn't make any sense to him.

  And he'd said to himself, when he hadn't understood Jase's answer or gotten any satisfaction out of it, well, he wasn't an astronomer and he didn't understand the ship's navigation; or maybe space wasn't as romantic as he'd thought it was — or maybe — or maybe — or maybe.

  Well, but. But. But.

  Did delusion play a part in it? Or a human urge to fill out Jase's participation and make excuses for behavior that otherwise wasn't satisfying his expectations.

  The ship was doing as it promised. The spacecraft was becoming a reality.

  But in his failure to find the friendly, cheerful young man he'd talked to by radio link before the drop, he'd insisted on making that side of Jase exist in the apartment.

  He'd done all Jase's side of the conversations in his head, was what he'd done. He'd made up all sorts of answerless answers Jase might give, if Jase had the vocabulary, if he had time to sit and talk at depth. Naturally Jase was under stress: language learning did that to a mind. Or maybe — or maybe Jase had been doing the same, filling in between the lines to suit his initial impression; and when those expectations didn't match reality, he felt betrayed.

  "Jase," he said.

  "What?"

  "Where was the ship?"

  "I told you. A star. A number on a chart."

  "You know the feeling you had we weren't going fishing?"

  "Yes?"

  "It's what I feel when you tell me that."

  Silence followed. It wasn't a happy silence. He wished at leisure he hadn't come at Jase with that.

  He wished a mir
acle would happen and Jase would come out of his sulk and be the person he'd thought he was getting, the person who'd help him, not pose him problems; the person who'd stand by him with reason when the going got tough.

  But Barb had done that until she'd had enough. She'd run to marry Paul Saarinson. Maybe Jase didn't want a career of keeping the paidhi mentally together, considering they had to share an apartment.

  Maybe in meeting him, the astonishing thought came to him, Jase hadn't found the man he'd thought he was dealing with, either. The breakdown of trust might be rooted more deeply than any dispute over truthfulness, in failings of his own. He managed so well with atevi. His personal life —

  Ask Barb how he got along. Ask Barb how easy it was to deal with him.

  He remembered Wilson-paidhi. He remembered saying to himself he wouldn't ever get to that state. The bet had been among University students in the program that Wilson couldn't smile. That Wilson couldn't react. Grim man. Unresponsive as hell.

  But at the same time those of them going for the single Field Service slot learned to contain what they felt. You learned not to show it. You studied being unreadable.

  Barb had complained of it. Barb used to say — he could remember her face across that candlelit table — You're not on the mainland, Bren. It's me, Bren.

  It gave him a queasy feeling to realize, well, maybe — maybe it had something to do with the falling away and the anger of humans he dealt with. But he'd told Jase. He'd tried to teach Jase to do it. Jase should realize why he didn't show expression.

  Shouldn't he realize it?

  Move that into the category of fishing trips.

  Fact was, he'd told Jase not to show emotion with atevi, and when Banichi and Jago walked in, he'd been laughing and lively and all those things he'd taught Jase not to be.

  Maybe they should have thought a little less about language early on, and more about communication. Maybe they should have learned first what they expected of each other instead of each resigning himself to what he'd gotten.

  "You and I," he said in Mosphei', "you and I need to talk, Jase. We need it very badly."

  "We were going to do that out here."

  "I'm sorry. I didn't remotely know what I was getting you into. I knew it was a chancy time. It's always a chancy time, especially when the pressure mounts up and you want to get away. I knew present company was the chanciest thing on the planet but the people who can do anything always are. It's the way it works, Jase."

  "I trust you," Jase said in a curiously fragile tone — had to say it loudly, with all the thump and creak of the mechieti. "I do trust you, Bren. I'm trying like hell to."

  "I'll get you back in one piece," he said. "I swear I will."

  "That isn't what I'm worried about."

  "What is?" he asked, thinking he'd finally gotten one thread that might pull up a clue to Jase's thinking.

  But Jase didn't answer that.

  And in the next moment he saw Cenedi rein back while Babs kept going. Something was going on. He thought Cenedi had done that to talk to Banichi.

  But he was the target. Cenedi fell all the way back to him and Jase.

  "Bren-paidhi," Cenedi said, as Bren restrained Nokhada from a nip at her rival. "The dowager asks why you avoid her. She told me to say exactly that, and to say that Nokhada still knows her way, nadi, if you've forgotten."

  * * *

  CHAPTER 22

  « ^ »

  Nokhada indeed knew the way, and with a little lax-ness on his part thought she was being sly about moving forward. Had he touched her with the crop, he'd have been there at the expense of every mechieta in front of her.

  As it was, Nokhada announced to the mechieti in her path she was coming through with small butts of her head, a little push with the rooting-tusks against an obstinate flank. Mechieti hide was fortunately thick, and tails lashed and heads tossed, but no blood resulted, just ruffling of well-groomed hair.

  Cenedi had lagged back. Nokhada achieved the position she wanted, next to Babsidi, and became quite tractable.

  "Ah, well," Ilisidi said, sitting with that easy, graceful seat. She deigned a sidelong glance. "One can only imagine."

  One didn't dare say a thing.

  "Oh, come, come, nand' paidhi. Are we like humans? Or are humans like us? Is it — how am I to put it delicately — technically feasible?"

  "One is certain we are not the first pair to have made the —" That led, in Ragi, to a difficult grammatical pass. He was sure he blushed. "To try."

  "Was it pleasant?" she asked, delighting, damn her, to ask.

  "Yes, nand' dowager." He wouldn't retreat, and met her sidelong glance with a pleasant smile.

  Her grin could blind the sun. And vanished, in pursed lips. "Now that the world knows the paidhi has such interests, there'll be such gossip. My neighbor who loves to spy on my balcony will be absolutely convinced of scandal in our little breakfasts, now. We must do it again."

  "I would be delighted, aiji-ma." He had no need to feign relief to have her take it well. "I treasure those hours you give to me."

  "Oh, not that I have any scarcity of hours! I languish in disuse. My hours are such a little gift."

  "Your hours and your good sense are my rescue, aiji-ma, and so I trespass egregiously on them, but never, never wish to impose."

  "Languishing, I say. And now, now you drop young men from the heavens and expect me to civilize them. — Did I detect strife, nand' paidhi? Do I find discord?"

  "He doesn't expect fish at this altitude."

  Ilisidi laughed and laughed.

  "Ah, paidhi-ji, a fish is what we hope for. A great gape-mouthed fish of a Kadigidi, which thinks to wreck us. I wanted you with me, Bren-ji. I like the numbers we've worked with this far; and I never tempt an Atageini beyond his virtue."

  He was shocked. Outright shocked. Banichi and Jago had ridden up on his right and he wondered if they had accounted how great a temptation the paidhiin posed inside an Atageini perimeter, with the dice in motion, the demons of chance and fortune given their moment to overthrow the order of the world.

  Baji-naji. The latticework of the universe, that allowed movement in the design.

  Tabini was sleeping with the Atageini: Tatiseigi had made his move to get into the apartment to get at them, for good or ill or just to make up his mind, and Ilisidi had moved in. Ilisidi had possessed herself of the greatest temptation that might tip the Atageini toward a power-grab of their own, just flicked temptation out of Tatiseigi's reach at the very moment it might prove critical to his choice of direction in these few dangerous days.

  Believe that Tabini didn't see it? Possible. Remotely possible.

  But if Tabini should miscalculate, if he should wake up stabbed by an Atageini bride, the Atageini and the Kadigidi alike had to reckon that getting rid of Tabini didn't kill Ilisidi.

  And twice the Padi Valley nobles had politicked to keep Ilisidi from being aiji.

  Dare Tatiseigi move on Tabini now, or move on Ilisidi, who had the paidhiin in the middle of an action that could put them all, if it failed, in Kadigidi hands?

  Tabini's rule was a two-headed beast. He saw that now with crystal clarity.

  Bane of my life, Tabini called Ilisidi.

  And Tabini had resorted to her in what seemed reckless action when he knew he had to contemplate war with Mospheira.

  She hadn't gone home since.

  "Any news?" she asked Cenedi now.

  "Quiet still, aiji-ma."

  "Well, well, so long as it lasts."

  The dowager called rest, and Bren actively rode Nokhada back through the company as it drew to a halt, a choice he was sure, in the way he'd come to understand how Nokhada did think, that Nokhada perfectly well understood. She expressed her dislike with flattened ears and a bone-jarring gait which he had come to understand he had to answer with a swat or she'd think her rider wasn't listening.

  But not with the heel, or he'd be through the company like a shot: he used the crop at the same t
ime he kept a pressure on the rein. The gust of breath and the shift into a smooth gait was immediate as she moved through mechieti establishing rights over their small patches of green grass, a touchy business of snarls and status in the herd; and Nokhada breezed past lower-status mechieti with scarcely a missed beat, back to where Jase and the boy were already dismounted.

  He stopped Nokhada at the edge of the herd and slid down, keeping the rein in hand and the crop visible, against what otherwise might be a tendency slyly to wander closer to Babsidi during the stop.

  The head went down; she snatched mouthfuls of grass.

  Jase didn't ask him, What did the dowager want? The boy didn't, either. But the boy wasn't his partner.

  Maybe, the amazing thought dawned on him, Jase was waiting for his ally to say something.

  And, dammit, the boy was underfoot and all ears, he was sure. He couldn't send the boy to Banichi. They were talking to Cenedi on matters the boy didn't need to hear, either. He looked in that direction and met the boy's absolutely earnest gaze.

  And saw the escort. "Nadi," he said to the man, "Haduni, please brief the young gentleman: we may have to take a faster pace."

  "Nand' paidhi." Haduni gave a nod as if he perfectly understood and had been waiting for such an order, then smoothly collected the all-elbows young lord and steered him to the side.

  Bren heaved a sigh and with a sharp jerk of two fingers against the rein in his left hand, checked Nokhada's intent to gain a few meters on her agenda. "He's very anxious," he said to Jase. "He sees the reputation of his house at stake."

  "What did they want up there?" Jase obligingly asked the question. Jase did the obvious next step.

  "To be sure I knew things were all right," he said and told himself to relax, let his face relax, use expression.

  And what in hell was he supposed to do? Grin like a fool? He looked at the grass under his feet and looked up and managed a little smile, one he trusted didn't look foolish. When he knew damned well he hadn't been shut down with Ilisidi. He just let Jase touch off his defenses, that was what he was doing, and it was a flywheel effect of distrust and guardedness.