Inheritor (53 page)

But, foreseeing the day, he'd backed up what he could. And he couldn't avoid the direct contact. It was a reciprocating set of operations that would flow back and forth — if he got in.

He used the keyboard. He entered what he had. He sat, with a human by him who
was
a computer tech from a system vastly more advanced than his, who didn't, Jase said, know as much about what Jase called
these early machines
as he knew about atevi. Jago was there. Banichi was. Cenedi was. And at the critical keystroke, the computer telltales lit up, flickered, and kept flickering. He sat and listened for the vocal output, which he didn't believe would come.

But relays were clicking. It sounded as if relays were clicking. On the State Department lines, if that was how he'd gotten in, there was a robot, not a human operator. If the numbers were good, the call went to another robot.

But if what he feared was true, the second robot would be deactivated, the one that once had been able to get him through to the Foreign Office.

Next relay. He expected a voice. He could hardly believe it.

Then another click dashed his hopes. Click. Pause. Click. Click. Click.

"They must be routing the call to the far side of the island," he said to Jase, and even as he said it, he suspected the call was doing exactly that: those were repeated long-distance connections, his codes still burrowing through walls and routing itself, please God, to the State Department and the Foreign Office, where if he was very, very lucky, at this late, after-dark hour, he might find the system routed itself
without
an operator, as could happen if your codes were very, very clean, to Shawn, wherever he was.

It rang.

"
You have reached
—" It was the damn recording. He punched a manual code. And it rang another number.

"Foreign Office."

It was a young voice. Female. Very young. His heart sank.

"Shawn Tyers," he said. "Code check. This is an emergency."

"Sir?"

"The Foreign Secretary." God, God, they were hiring fools. "Put me through to the Foreign Secretary. You punch code 78. You have to do it from your console."

"
Is this Mr. Cameron
?" There was alarm in the voice. Excitement. And he didn't want to admit it, but he saw no choice.

"Yes. It is. On diplomatic business. Life and death. Put me through."

"
He's gone home. I mean
—
he's gone home up to the coast, Mr. Cameron. They shut the office
."

"They shut the office."

"
Well
—" The voice lowered. Sounded shaky. "
Mr. Cameron, the State Department shut it down. They've fired everybody in the whole Foreign Office, except I worked for both offices. I'm the night operator
."

"Polly?" He remembered a dark-complexioned young woman with a part down the middle of her head.

"Yes, sir, Mr. Cameron. And they're going to fire me, too. They record all the calls. I can't call out. Is there something you can tell me that I can tell somebody? "

"Good night, Polly."

"
Yes, sir
." The voice was very faint. Hushed as it was, she sounded like a child. "
Have a good evening, sir
."

Damn, he wanted to say. And wanted to slam the receiver down. But he didn't. He drew a deep breath and calmed his nerves.

"Nand' dowager, the State Department has discharged everyone in the Foreign Office. Even the Secretary has gone home. That's what I'm told, and I believe the young woman who told me. Yolanda-paidhi may well have gone somewhere. But I'm very fearful she hasn't."

Jase, leaning on the counter, hung his head and looked utterly downcast.

"So," the dowager said.

"I know where she'd come," a young voice said.

And with one accord everyone looked at the boy from Dur.

«
^
»

T
here were maps.
Ilisidi's security had very detailed maps, which they had brought into the small, glass-walled conference room just off the main communications center. Out there beyond the glass, technicians of the Messengers' Guild kept routine broadcasts going and, being mostly Saduri locals stranded away from their homes by the crisis, gratefully had their suppers off the official buffet. In this room, standing around the conference table with the chairs pushed back to the glass, all of them that had to make the plans were the crowded but willing audience as Rejiri of Dur-wajran ran his hand over a profusion of numbers and topographical lines on the shoreline of Mospheira — including this area, which was not detailed on most atevi maps.

"Most illegal boats come from the Narrows, here," Rejiri said with his fingers on the narrowest part of the strait, that nearest Aidin. "And there's a very bad current in the Narrows, so it looks like a real good place to go across but it isn't. Freighters know, but they come down from Jackson and catch the current and drive hard. They have the big engines, too. But the little boats, they can't carry that much in their tanks, nand' dowager, and if they go too hard they'll run their tanks dry and especially if they don't have a lot of extra tanks aboard they'll be in a lot of trouble. If they leave out of Jackson and go with the current and the wind's not in their faces off Aidin headland they can cut across and the current will just carry the little boats to

Dur. But the sneaky thing is if you don't know anything but boating in safe water and you don't know you're in the current and you think you're going across, and you aren't, you're going way, way south. You want to have a lot of cans of fuel, a whole lot of cans. But if you run out or sometimes if you go out of Bretano — if you do that, and some do, they all come in right here." The boy pointed to a spot on the outer shore, at the place where it turned in to Saduri Harbor — and drew a second breath. "That beach. If you drop a bottle in at Jackson or Bretano it's got to come here. You can find all sorts of stuff after a storm. Just junk, most times. But if there's a boat tried to smuggle stuff in, or if they don't make Dur, they'll break up on the rocks at the point or they'll make landfall somewhere right along here. And weather's been bad. Which could help them along but the seas are going to be awful, too."

"What does he say?" Jase wanted to know. The boy had a rapid patter, an accent, and he was using words Jase didn't know. Bren gave him the condensed version in Mosphei'.

"He's saying the current through the strait is very strong. Boats starting from Mospheira if they don't reach Dur, it carries them onto a beach near Saduri."

"Water current."

"Yes."
He
didn't know what caused a current. It wasn't the time to find out. He had a council of war around him and Jase. The dowager was looking grimly at the map over which he was sure her knowledge of plans that might be affected was superimposing other considerations, and the boy went on.

"Nand' dowager," the boy said. "I could take the plane out there. I could get to Dur and tell my father you need help."

Ilisidi scowled at the boy. "You don't have a key."

"One doesn't need a key, nandi."

"One forgot. Stealing airplanes is your trade. How
does
one start it?"

"One pushes a button, nand' dowager."

"A security disaster. Stay here. I plan to charge your father your hourly keep."

"But I could help!"

"Gods felicitous, boy, this is the communications headquarters for half the continent! Do you think we
can't phone
your father?"

"But they might tap the phones. Mightn't they, nand' dowager?"

There was quiet for a moment, and Cenedi said, "It might be a useful diversion. And the boy's presence on the radio could get four men in unannounced."

"A damned fool of a boy whose welfare is in
my
hands."

"Nand' dowager, I could go right off the cliff and
be
on approach. I could fly men into Dur! And we'll get my father to shut the ferry down, so nobody can go from Wiigin to here! If you send men, he'll believe me!"

"Wari-ji."

The man so named leaned a hand on the table. "One does see it as possible, aiji-ma. And the boy has a point."

"Instruct him. If he can start the thing,
if it
has fuel — let him go. And go now. We haven't touched Dur, so as not to involve them, but Dur has touched us. So let them act, if they will."

"Yes," the man said. Nawari was his entire name. "Boy."

The boy darted to the man and toward the door, remembered to bow, and went where the man beckoned him to go. There was a silence in the glassed-in room until the door was shut. On the end of a console counter outside in the communications center, the carefully prepared buffet laid in the path, and the boy pocketed a sandwich as he passed that table, against, Bren supposed, famine on the way to Dur.

It was safe food: their own people had brought it, as Bren understood, when they came in to secure Mogari-nai. Even if everyone but the paidhiin had had the foresight to tuck emergency rations into their pockets once they left the baggage behind.

"There's fuel in the plane," Ilisidi said. "As happens. Our staff flew it here." There were men still on guard on the roof and about the area of the transmission towers, men who had certainly gotten up to Mogari-nai somehow, but there were too many for one small plane. "One would leave the young fool here, but one can lay odds he'd be in the midst of matters." The dowager's fingers rested on the map, on the aforenamed beach and the island of Dur. "Dur-wajran and its position has been a concern. I do rely on the boy's assessment of his father's man'chi, and I am relieved on that score. We
have
a number of men on Dur. They came in two days ago on the ferry from Saduri, but they're there as tourists unless they receive orders or see trouble. Nawari will provide them orders for quiet and specific actions and, with the active cooperation of the lord of Dur, we can close off Wiigin from Saduri by water. The boy
can
be useful in that regard. As is his advice useful. Trust every local youth to know that beach. And if that
is
the case, so do the Kadigidi know it. They
may
have advised a boatload of otherwise inept human sailors to put out from Jackson Harbor with enough fuel just to keep the bow to the waves. Smugglers have used Dur, generally, since the stretch of beach in question is government reserve. So Cenedi informs me."

"Trust every local youth to have been
on
that beach," Cenedi said. "Nandiin, we had not relied on holding Dur, because its beaches are too broad and it's a wooded, populated island rife with smugglers' caches the locals don't want found. We believe a landfall on the Aidin headland would be far safer for the rebels. We do not have sufficient resources in Aidin to prevent a landing at village airstrips or movement at train stations or other routes that might bring Hanks-paidhi into friendly hands. If she comes by air she could possibly come in at the city airport at Wiigin and leave by train without our people being able to prevent her. But if she comes by boat — and we hope our heavy air activity up over Wiigin has discouraged an air route and forced her to that — we know now it will be a small boat, and

that
can't reach Wiigin. There's been a diplomatic snag in clearance for freighters, ours or theirs, to leave Mospheiran ports: the aiji has withdrawn permits as of yesterday. They've been warned, and they're a cautious breed. The last freighter in transit turned back to Mospheira this morning. If another leaves port, we can spot it. A small boat, however, has a good chance of getting through the net unseen, and they know that."

That freighter ban was very serious, Bren thought. Extremely serious, following the pattern of the attack on Mospheira the rebel radio had foretold. Atevi would be using surveillance planes out over the strait, probably overflying the harbors and provoking more alarm. The aiji did have customs boats, a number with guns of a range and power sufficient to sink another ship.

Mospheira also had such boats. There was a danger of confrontation if this state of crisis went on too long. "What does the
president
say?"

"There is a protest from the Trade Office regarding the aiji's action," Banichi said. "If they're officially aware of Hanks-paidhi's provocations, they're being very quiet about the matter. There's no signal they're willing to correct the problem."

"One suspects they
are
aware," Bren said, and was conscious he now contemplated treason; his stomach knotted up — but so did his nerves, from years of coping with the administration. "But they're not very brave, dowager-ji. They'll please their contributors until the first consequences show up where the voters can find out. Then their attention will be on keeping the voters from finding out and keeping their contributors from being exposed. They'll pull back. The main thing is keeping the customs boats away from each other. That's where people at lower levels could worsen the crisis."

"If they link up with Direiso," Ilisidi said, "she'll lead them on much more precipitate courses."

Or she'll be driven mad with frustration trying to deal with the Mospheiran government, Bren thought. Unless Direiso planned to invade Mospheira if she became aiji.

Which was not a joke. Direiso might indeed have such a notion. The island was ill-prepared to resist, precisely as it had been ill-prepared and ineptly led in the War of the Landing. It was, potentially, the same situation: a mushrooming crisis and most of the human population in slumberous disregard of the danger of a rebel ateva seizing power and running with it.

The same way one decree from Tabini's pen had swept away all debate, all studies, all partisan delays in relocating Patinandi Aerospace and reconfiguring the space program, so events around them now could replace Tabini, who tolerated humans, with Direiso, who would wipe them off the face of the earth.

Bad news multiplied and Mospheira blamed the Foreign Office which told it things that didn't match its expectations; Mospheira then refused to listen to the paidhi in the field and, rather than face down human agitators who now thought they were winning political points, Mospheira had withdrawn police protection from his mother's apartment, or worse, politics infiltrating the police departments had made it impossible for the Mospheiran government to do anything about political thugs and lunatics if they wanted to.