Inheritor (34 page)

But, good part of the operation, Jase grew more cheerful — as if the promise he'd been able to keep had gotten him past the depression and the despair. Jase was going to the ocean. He would see the sea. They'd talked last night of fishing, not from Geigi's port but from a more protected, governmentally owned site on the reserve across the same bay.

"Maybe we'll have a chance at the yellowtail," he'd said to Jase, although he was by no means certain the run of those fish would carry within the bay. Among the myriad other things he did keep up with, marine fish weren't within his field. Toby would have known.

But he couldn't ask the first question he'd had in years that Toby would have delighted in answering.

So with the appropriate baggage, just as a second dawn was breaking, they were gathering in the foyer for the promised trip — Banichi and Jago, Tano and Algini.

And himself with Jase.

"The baggage has gone, Bren-ji," Jago said. "The car is waiting."

Subway car, that was. His security was in a good mood: it lifted his spirits — shifted the world back into perspective. It was an emergency at home, yes; but, dammit, Toby could handle it — Toby was in the city, Toby was at their mother's apartment. Toby could deal with their mother and Toby didn't have to call him up and rage at him, when it was the first damn time
Toby
had showed up to handle one of their mother's crises, be it the divorce from their father, be it the lawsuit over the sale of the mountain cabin, be it aunt Gloria's husband's funeral, be it — God knew what.
This
time Toby was on duty and Toby could take care of their mother and the two of them could do the talking they should have done when Toby'd married to get away from the family and run off to live on the north shore having kids and making money hand over fist. Toby was the one she'd held up to him as the model son — well-married, stable, somebody to go visit.

Mother'd held Toby and Toby's familial situation up to him as the way
he
ought to be, but she'd damned sure phoned the University every time there was a crisis to get
Bren
across town. That was understandable, since it was in the same city; but even after he'd gone into the field and the strait had separated them, she'd not phoned the north shore for Toby to disturb his family, come home, and hire a lawyer for her. No, Toby'd had
a family
to consider, so she'd phoned the mainland and wanted
Bren-dear
to drop the governmental crisis and come home and fix things, which sometimes he could and sometimes he hadn't been able to. For a string of years every time he'd come home on vacation she'd had a crisis specifically designed to get him involved the second he stepped off the plane, to the point where he'd begun to think of marriage to Barb as an insulation.

It had gotten so his nerves were strung tight every time he knew his mother needed something, because
need
had gotten to be the relationship between them, and he'd already puzzled out that fact.

It had gotten to be the relationship between him and Barb, too, starting with
his
increasing need for her to meet that plane and shield him from his inability to say no. Someday he'd have married her so he'd have a wife to take precedence over what his mother needed. He'd puzzled that out, too.

Grim thought. Sobering thought. He could get
aggravated
with Barb, but the fact was that his cheerfulness once he'd arranged for Barb to meet the plane, the alternative being his mother arriving with a list of grievances and plans for his time, told him maybe — just maybe — his relationship to Barb breaking down in crisis wasn't just a case of Barb rushing to Paul Saarinson's soft life. Barb, being a healthy individual, had perhaps realized she wasn't up to being a support for a man who got off the plane every few months
needing
to be reassured and
needing to
be made happy and not to have troubles poured into his ears during his vacation.

The paidhi's home life and the paidhi's love life were neither one damn good and never had been, was the truth. The
I-need-you
business was no way for any two adults to have a relationship, not mother-son, not man-wife.

Not even brothers.

And it was about time their mother learned to call on Toby, because Toby was the one of her two sons she was going to have in reach; and it was about time Toby learned to define that relationship in a way he could live with. That was the plain truth. And they were all going to have to get used to it. She couldn't get Bren-dear home again.

Maybe duty to his family said he should resign his professional life, come home and live with it and do all those familial, loyal things, including suffer through a marital relationship that wouldn't work and a relationship with his mother that wasn't going to improve, and maybe it would improve his moral character to do that.

But it wasn't his job. It wasn't what other, equally important individuals relied on him doing for reasons a lot more important to the world than his personal problems. And he rather thought, as much trouble as it might make for the family, he should tip Toby off to the
need-you
business and the fact he was entitled to put his foot down and define his relationship with mama otherwise — early — before it ate Toby alive.

"Bren-ji?" Jago asked as he took his place in the elevator car.

"Tired," he said. "Tired, Jago-ji." He managed a cheerful face. "Time for a week on leave."

Banichi pressed the button. The elevator carried them down, down to the cavernous tile and concrete of the restricted subway station beneath the Bu-javid.

It was a short walk to the subway car, in a larger space than Jase had been in since he'd come into the Bu-javid by this same route.

"All right?" he asked Jase, seeing that little hesitation, that intake of breath.

"Fine," Jase said, and walked steadily beside him, Banichi and Jago in front, Tano and Algini behind, down past the train engine to the two cars which were waiting with the requisite House Guard and a Guild pair from the aiji's staff — Bren's eye picked them out.

"Nadi?" Banichi took up his post just inside, and they boarded, Tano and Algini going to the baggage car with junior security, Banichi and Jago staying with them.

"Rear seat's the most comfortable," he said to Jase — he recalled saying that the day he'd escorted Jase
to
the hill, in the same car, on his way to the confinement in which Jase had lived. They took their seats. Jago, on pocket com, standing by the door, talked to someone, probably intermediate to the Bu-javid station that governed use of the tracks, clearing their departure.

The door shut and the car got underway.

Jase sat with nervous anticipation evident as the shuttered private subway car rumbled and thumped along its course down the hill and across a city Jase had never seen except from the windows of the Bu-javid and once from the air.

"Nervous, nadi?"

"No, nadi." Jase was quick to say so. And sat, hands on knees, braced against the slightest movement of the car.

But a lot of strangeness, Bren could only guess, was surely impacting Jase's senses right now, from the shaking of the car, the smells, the noise.

Evidently some of them were alarming sensations from a spaceman's point of view, as were large open spaces: the echoes disoriented him, maybe. Maybe just the size did. Bren had no idea, but to reassure Jase he adopted an easy pose, legs extended, ankles crossed, and kept talk to a minimum while Jase's eyes darted frantically to every different rattle of the wheels on the switching-points, the least change in sound as they exited the tunnel and went in open air.

"We're on the surface again," Bren explained. "We've been in a tunnel."

Jase didn't look reassured. And probably Jase knew he was overreacting, even suspected he looked foolish in his anxiety, but they had one more rule in effect, and Jase had agreed to it as Jase had agreed to every other condition: no matter what, Jase wasn't to speak anything but Ragi on this trip. If the car wrecked, he'd made the point with Jase,
scream
in Ragi. He might not be able to hold to it throughout, but if that was the ideal, maybe, Bren thought, it would encourage Jase to shift his thoughts into the language totally, the way Jase had existed while he was gone on the tour. If it didn't do everything he'd hoped, in terms of forcing Jase into Ragi, it might at least force Jase back into that mindset so that he had a chance of arguing with him.

Meanwhile the car thumped and rumbled its way toward the airport.

A happy family, on its way to the beach, Bren thought, surveying his complement of catatonic, well-dressed roommate and heavily armed security in black leather and silver studs, themselves in high spirits and having a good time.

"We were
due
a vacation," Banichi remarked cheerfully. They were not quite so vacation-bound that he or any of his fellow Guild members took advantage of the stocked breakfast juice bar in the aiji's own, red velvet-appointed subway car, but Banichi did sit down at his ease, stretch out his huge body and heave a sigh. And doubtless it
was
far better than a rooftop in the peninsula. "We're due rain, of course, but it's spring — what can one hope?"

"It should still be fine," Jago said from her vantage by the door, one hand loosely on a hanging strap. "The sea, the sand —"

"The cold fogs."

"Nadiin," Bren said, and roused himself to the same level of enthusiasm as his security, "we are safe, we are away, lord Tatiseigi is visiting his
own
apartment tonight,
we are not there, and I
believe they have gotten the illicit television downstairs."

"The Guard is guarding it, nand' paidhi," Banichi said, "with its usual zeal, of course."

There were grins. Probably Jase didn't follow the joke. But security was in a high good mood and the car rocked and thundered on, swayed around the turn that meant the airport station was coming up. Junior security, who had their baggage under close watch, would get it all aboard the vans.

The subway train stopped, security rose to take routine positions as the doors opened and security went out first.

Bren collected Jase, left the details to his staff, and sure enough the vans were waiting, with Bu-javid security in charge from beginning to end, in this very highly securitied spur of the regular public subway.

"Careful," he said, fearing Jase's balance problems, but Jase made a clean step out of the car and onto the concrete.

Jase had no difficulty there, and none in boarding the waiting van. He flung himself into the seat, however, as if relieved to sit down; his face was a little pale, his eye-blinks grown rapid as they did when he was fighting problems in perspective. Bren sat down more slowly beside him, with Banichi and Jago immediately after while others were loading the luggage into the second van under Tano's supervision.

The van whisked them to the waiting plane and braked right by the ladder. Immediately, the second van was with them, bringing the luggage, which was not alone their clothes, but the clutter of weaponry and electronics that went with the paidhi wherever he and his security went.

It was Tabini's jet. And it was needful now, Banichi out first and Jago next, and Bren third, for Jase to climb down from the van into the noise of the jet engines, and walk, on a flat surface and under a sky with a few gray-bottomed clouds, from the roofed van to the ladder and up the ladder into the plane. Jase made the step, didn't look up (which he'd said especially bothered him), and crossed to the ladder, shaking off Jago's offered hand.

"Wait," Bren said to Banichi and Jago, because the metal ladder shook when that pair climbed it with their usual energy, and he didn't figure that would help Jase at all, whose knuckles were white on the rail as he climbed doggedly toward the boarding platform, his eyes on the steps, never on his surroundings.

Jase went inside, to be met by the co-pilot. Bren went up next and Jago and Banichi followed him; Tano and Algini stayed below to stand watch over the luggage-loading.

The computer, alone of their luggage, went in the cabin with them; Jago had it, and tucked it into a storage area, while outside the luggage-loading went so fast that the hatch thumped down while Jase was settling into his seat in the table-chair grouping and while Bren was saying hello to the pilot and co-pilot.

"One hopes for a quieter flight, nand' paidhi," the pilot said.

He'd actually
forgotten
about the boy from Dur during the last twenty hours, during which they'd accomplished the logistics and arrangements, and during which uncle Tatiseigi had lodged in Ilisidi's hospitality.

They were away and clear. The boy from Dur had his ribboned card which might save him from parental wrath, the apartment was still intact after the state reception, and the television was out of the pantry, entertaining the House Guard for the duration of uncle Tatiseigi's stay, which should about equal their days on the western shore near Saduri.

"I anticipate a quiet flight and a quiet ten days, nadi," Bren said to the pilot and co-pilot, "and I hope you and your associate have ample time for a little fishing yourselves. I've expressed the wish the staff could lodge you at some place that would allow it for however long you have at leisure."

"Nand' paidhi, they have done so, and we thank you, nand' Jase as well." This with a nod toward the seating where Jase had belted in.

"Nadi," Bren said in ending the conversation, and went back to sit beside Jase. He
did
feel better now that things were underway. His blood was moving faster with their stirring about, and the slight headache was diminishing: possibly the sleeping pill had worn off.

"It's excellent weather for flying. A smooth flight, nadi. Sun shining. Calm air."

"Yes," Jase said. It was a word. It was a response. Then: "Too close to the planet," Jase muttered, then grinned; and Bren obligingly laughed, in the understanding both that it was an uneasy joke and that Jase had, finally, just been able to get a few words assembled into an almost-sentence of Ragi this morning. After twenty-odd hours of intermittent wordless moments and frustration, losing all confidence in his ability to speak the Ragi language, Jase was showing signs of pulling out of it — phase two of his mental break, a tendency to suspect all his word choices and to blow his grammar — which, coupled with fears of insulting the atevi staff, wasn't improving his confidence. But it was textbook psychological reaction. Jase had been vastly embarrassed, humiliated, terrified of very real diplomatic consequences at the same moment he was put on national television — at his worst moment of personal crisis. It wasn't just the illusion of helplessness language students went through, it had been real helplessness, and real danger, and thank God, Bren thought, they'd had the dowager there, and an understanding security, and Damiri. Also thank God, Tatiseigi was no fool.