Inheritor (15 page)

I
have personnel recommendations which may separate and isolate members of the development teams at two sites rather than having discordant persons within the same facility. I do suggest that you assign persons to look into the issues involved, which are beyond my grasp, but which seem bitter and divisive and which are not, by advisements I have received, following the design specifications
.

Freely translated, intervene in Ladisiri, aiji-ma, before someone gets killed.

And considering the province was dualistic in philosophy, with no felicitous third, the aiji might threaten to move the research to a rival institution.
That
might get the attention of the two staffs. Certainly the two senior directors were oblivious to the quarrels, being lost in a probably productive debate on a design that, God save them, might be useful in advanced theory but was not going to fly on this ship.

I
also urge, aiji-ma, that the needs of the aeronautical engineers should have precedence over further theoretical research at this time
.

I consider this a matter of great delicacy and

great urgency, which I shall manage according to your orders or leave to more tactful persons at your discretion.

It was the one truly unmanageable problem they had with the project, give or take a few operational difficulties which were not at that level. This one — the aiji might have to straighten out by calling in the lord of the province and having an urgent discussion with him.

He was, however, finished with letters. He rolled the missive, slipped it into his message cylinder, and sealed it.

And chose to get up and walk the darkened hall to the lighted foyer and security station at the other end of that hall in search of a messenger rather than calling staff to carry it to security. He had no desire to have them disturb Tabini's evening with it, and he could advise the junior staff to advise Tabini's staff to that effect. As much as anything, he wanted to see whether the light was showing from under Jase''sdoor, to know whether Jase was asleep or awake, and by that —

Well, he didn't know, entirely, but he wanted to know Jase's state of mind, whether he was still awake, which might indicate he was still debating matters with himself; and that might indicate he
should
try to speak to him.

He'd looked in that direction, seeing no light. He looked where he was going and found a towering pair of shadows between himself and the distant foyer light, one very broad-shouldered and
not
the willowy silhouette of one of his staff.

He spun and ran for his lighted bedroom and slammed his door. And shot the bolt.

And kept himself from standing in front of the door in doing so. He had a gun. He had it in the bureau drawer. He wasn't supposed to have it. Surely staff had heard the disturbance. If they were alive.

Came a footstep on the carpet outside. A gentle tap.

"Bren-ji?"

A deep and resonant voice. A familiar voice.

"Banichi?"

"One is impressed with all your actions, Bren-ji. If you have the gun in hand, kindly put it back in the drawer."

He had no doubt then it was Banichi. And the other would be Jago.

"Have you been well, nadi?"

"My life has been dull and commonplace." He said it as a joke, while his heart resumed a normal rate. He thought in the next breath it was true. He was firmly convinced that the day's events in the peninsula and Banichi's return weren't without relationship. And here they were, back with him, and just in shooting the bolt back to let them in he found his hands trembling.

He wanted so much to throw his arms around both of them.

But that would appall Banichi and Jago would be puzzled, and the most wonderful sight in the world to him was as he looked up — considerably — at two atevi in the silver-studded black of the aiji's personal security.

"One hadn't meant to alarm the house," Jago said earnestly.

"Although it would have been better for you to call out an alarm," Banichi added, "since you were behind the wall — not, one trusts, against the paneled door, paidhi-ji."

Light had come on in the hall. Servants arrived in nightclothes and robes from the rear halls, along with Algini and a couple of the junior security staff from the other direction in far calmer, knew-about-it attitude. Tano arrived from the same direction as the recently sleeping servants, in a bath towel and carrying his pistol: Tano
hadn't
known.

Jase's door opened. Jase appeared in his robe, behind the line of servants, looking rumpled and confused.

"It's quite all right," Tano said to everyone. "It's quite all right. No alarm, Jasi-ji. Banichi and Jago are back."

"Have you had supper, nadiin-ji," Bren asked, instead of hugging both of them, "or should the staff make up something?"

"We ate on the plane, nadi," Jago said.

"But being off-duty now," Banichi said, "and being in the place where we will sleep tonight, one
might
sit and talk for a bit over a glass of shibei if the paidhi were so inclined."

«
^
»

J
ase had gone
back to bed and, one hoped, to sleep. Tano and Algini said they had business to attend to.

Business, at this hour, Bren asked himself; and couldn't decide whether they were occupied with his request for the message trail on Jase's business, heating up the phone lines to the earth station at Mogari-nai, or whether it was some new duty Banichi had handed them as he came in, but whatever the case, Tano and Algini kept to the duty station.

That left him Banichi and Jago alone for company, and oh, he was glad to see them. Banichi made him feel safe; and Jago — Jago, so proper and so formal — she was the one who
would
talk to him with utter disregard of protocols, the one who'd try anything at least once, including intimacy with a human. It hadn't happened: the time had never been right; but it
could
have happened, that was what he didn't forget.

Tonight was like picking back up as if they'd never left — and yet he had to realize, truthfully, for all the difference they'd made in his life, they'd been with him just that few weeks of the crisis preceding Jase's landing. Then they'd been gone again, a reassignment, he'd been told, a fact which had saddened him immensely, and put him in a very hard place with Tano and Algini, who were wonderful people — but who weren't the two he most —

Loved.

Too valuable to the aiji, he'd said to himself: he'd no right to assume he could keep them in his service. He was damned lucky to have Tano and Algini, whom he also —

Liked very well.

Maybe it was just a visit, maybe just a temporary protection to him during the latest crisis. Maybe they wouldn't stay. He was halfway afraid to ask them. He wanted to, as he wanted to ask Tabini whether he could have them with him permanently, but he felt as if he would be asking for something the worth of a province, and to which Tabini would have to give a state answer, and think the paidhi had gotten just a little forward in recent months.

They sat, they shared a nightcap in the sitting-room — that, and the warm stove with the window open wide to the spring breezes — the extravagance of the rich and powerful, a waste of fuel with which Bren had never reconciled himself morally, and which in prior and simpler days, he would have reported and protested to the aiji.

But there was so much he had never reconciled with himself — morally.

"Dare I ask," he began with them, "where you've been?"

"One might ask, but we can't say," Jago said. "Regretfully, nand' paidhi."

He'd come very, very close to going to bed with Jago — well, technically, they'd been
in
it, sort of — a fact that had crossed his mind no few times in the last half year, in the lonely small hours of the winter nights. She'd
been
there, in his imagination, at least.

She'd either be offended — or she'd laugh. He thought she'd laugh, and dared a direct look.

He got nothing back. Atevi reserve, he said to himself. Guild discipline, and just — that she was atevi.

Forget
that
for a starting point and, God, couldn't one get in a great deal of trouble?

She probably wasn't even interested any longer. Probably had a new hobby.

"One hears," Banichi said, "that Jase-paidhi has had unhappy news given him by improper channels."

"True," he said. Banichi had a very incisive way of summing things up. And, summoning up the fragments of his wits at this hour, dismissing the question of Jago's reactions, and meanwhile trying to be as concise: "I'm concerned for three things, one, his human feelings, two, his isolation, three, the way atevi minds might expect him to act. I asked Tano and Algini what was ordinary reaction for an ateva, and it didn't seem far off the way humans react." He let that echo in the back of his mind two seconds, added, recollected, revised, definitely under the influence of the shibei, and said: "Four, sometimes when the difference between ship-humans and Mospheira isn't that apparent, it surprises me. And, felicitous five, complicating things, Jase is trying to restrain his reactions in front of atevi."

"How is his fluency lately?" Banichi asked.

"Improved just enough that he can get out of the children's language and into serious trouble. He's learned the words that pertain to this apartment and to the space program and engineering. His vocabulary is quite good for 'where is?', 'bring me food' and 'open the window,' and for 'machining tolerance' and 'autoclave.' Still not much beyond that — but acquiring felicitous nuance."

"One would be hard pressed to join these items in conversation," Banichi said dryly. "Even with nuance."

"One would." He was amused, and felt the unwinding of something from about his heart. Tano didn't tend to catch him up on the daily illogics of his trade, but Banichi would jab him, mercilessly. So would Jago. He had to revise the rules of his life and go on his guard all the time, or be the butt of their humor. And he enjoyed it. He fired back. "So what
did
befall lord Saigimi?"

"One hears," Banichi said, "someone simply and uncreatively shot him."

"So. Doubtless, though, it was professional."

"Doubtless," Jago said. "Though late."

So Tabini didn't trouble to make it look accidental, was his private thought: more dramatic effect, more fear on the part of those who should be afraid.

"Is it quiet in the south?"

"The south. Oh, much more so. But quiet often goes between storm fronts."

A warning. A definite warning, from Jago. "Is there anything you wish to tell me, nadiin-ji?"

"Much that I would
wish
to inform you," Banichi said, with the contrary-to-fact
wish
, "but essentially, and until we know the outcome of yesterday's events, please take no unnecessary chances. The situation is quite volatile. Lord Saigimi of the Hagrani had acquired allies, more timorous or more prudent than he, but should any of
those
lords fall within their houses, and some more radical members within those same houses rise — -times might become interesting. In most instances, understand, the replacements for any of those persons would not lead with Saigimi's force of will; but one of the lot is worth watching, Saigimi's daughter Cosadi — a bit of a fool, and an associate of Direiso —
female
conspiracy, entirely impenetrable."

Jago made a face and shot her senior partner a look. And knowing these two, Bren recognized a tossed topic when it sailed by him. "A woman may be more in Direiso's confidence. Naturally."

"I don't think the junior member of the Hagrani clan is on Direiso's intellectual level," Banichi muttered. "And she will see herself eaten without salt."

Quickly, that idiom meant. The two had fallen to discussion in front of him, but played it out
for
him, quite knowledgeably so.

"But considers herself to be Direiso's intellectual heir-apparent," Jago said.

"Oh, small chance."

"An earnest student — capable of flattery."

"I thought discerning women saw through such frivolity."

Clearly it was a jibe. Bren failed to know where. But Jago wasn't daunted.

"They receive
that
kind of flattery so rarely, nadi."

Banichi's brow lifted. "What, praise? Admiration? I pay it when due."

Banichi evidently scored. Or came out even.

Jago shot him a sidelong look, and was otherwise expressionless.

"Jago believes she saved my life," Banichi said. "And will
not
decently forget it."

"Is
that
it?" Bren asked. "I at least am grateful, Jago-ji, that you saved his life. I would have been very sad if you hadn't."

"I did raise that point," Jago said, still straight-faced. "He of course was in no danger."

"None," Banichi said with an airy wave.

"Guild etiquette does not permit me to state he is a fool, Bren-ji, but he risked himself attempting to preempt
me
in a position of better vantage. — And I did
not
require help, nandi!"

A wise human sat very still. And ducked his head and bit his lip, because he knew it was a performance for his benefit.

He was appalled to think, then, like a lightning-stroke, that he was hearing details from this morning, regarding a death for which, dammit, yes, these two were directly responsible.

So who had fired? At whom?

Jago? To save Banichi? Jago had killed someone?

Lord Saigimi?

Or his security? That would lack finesse. Banichi would never joke about such an event as that. And did Tabini want such matters communicated to him?

Banichi took a casual pose, legs extended, and had a sip of the liqueur.

"Bren-ji, just take care."

"I am very glad you're both safe."

"So are we," Banichi said, and gave a quiet smile. "We only said to ourselves, 'What does it lack now?' And Jago said, 'Our lives are too quiet. Let's find nadi Bren.' So we climbed back over the wall and took the first plane to Shejidan."