Invader (13 page)

Assassinate a relative? That was possibly a rational solution.

The damn trouble was — the paidhi had far better pipelines and mechanisms for dispensing new information into the atevi mainland than he had for moving public opinion on Mospheira. It had never been
necessary
before for the paidhi to convince Mospheirans. It had never been
necessary
before for the paidhi to campaign against the conservatives, because the conservatives had never had a crisis in which they could move members of academe, as he feared they had done, to interfere in the paidhi's office.

But the academic insulation that supported the paidhi and assisted in the decision-making — usually without the politicians involved in the process — was a politically naive group of people, who, confronted with panic, might have been rushed to put Hanks in a position where she could at least observe at a time when lack of information seemed very ominous.

He'd never taken Hanks seriously. He'd taken for granted that she'd drown quietly in academe and be so old if she ever got the appointment she'd likely decline it, immersed lifelong in Mospheiran ways and incapable of adjusting if she got here. He'd trusted the academics to just keep shunting his conservative albatross aside for decades, give her some tenured professorship in Philosophy of Contact or some other nap class. Ask him a year ago and he'd have said that was the future of Deana Hanks.

It wasn't.

The shiver that had started wouldn't go away. It wasn't fear, he said to himself. It was simply sitting in one spot in what he now realized, by the blowing of the curtains, was a draft from the windows, until his legs went to sleep. It was the aftereffects of anesthetic. It was the whole crisis he'd been through —

It was the whole, damnable, mishandled situation. He'd been in the eastern part of the continent, out of the information loop, when atevi needed him most. It might not be his fault; atevi might have put him there temporarily until they were assured they could rely on — not trust — him.

But for whatever necessary satisfaction of atevi suspicion, he had been kept in the dark, all the same, and now if he misstepped — if he was even apprehended to misstep, politically — or if he pulled a mistake like Hanks' mistake with lord Geigi, which he
still
had to clean up —

Hell. He'd made a few mistakes himself, early on in his tenure.

And hell twice — the woman had to have some sense, somewhere located. You couldn't get through Comparative Reasoning or the math and physics requirements if you hadn't at least the ability to draw abstract conclusions. He should give reason a try.

He extricated himself from the chair, bit by slow bit and, letting his foot tingle back to awareness, got up and pulled the bell-cord. Saidin answered it. He sent Saidin after Jago, and Jago to deliver two verbal messages. To Tabini:
I've learned all I'm likely to find out. I'm ready to talk to the public
.

And to Deana Hanks:
I
will shortly issue an official position on the ship presence; you will receive a copy. We need to talk. Is tomorrow evening possibly agreeable to your schedule
?

Then he went back to his chair, tucked up, and shut his eyes. Amazing how fast, how heavily sleep could come down, once the decision was made and the load was off.

But he could afford to sleep now, he said to himself. Other people could deal with the scheduling and the meetings and the arranging of things. He half-waked when someone settled a coverlet over his legs, decided they didn't need him, that the ship hadn't swooped down with death rays yet, and he simply hugged the coverlet up over a breeze-chilled arm and enjoyed the comfortable angle he'd found.

He waked again when Jago came to him, called his name and gave him another message cylinder sealed with Tabini's seal.

It gave the time of the joint session as midevening, unusual for atevi legislative proceedings, and added, simply,
Your attendance and interpretations are gratefully requested, nand' paidhi
.

"Any other message?" he asked. "Anything from the island?"

"No, I regret not, Bren-ji."

"Did you talk to Deana Hanks? What did she say?"

"She was very courteous," Jago said. "She listened. She said tell you a word. I hesitate to say it."

"In Mosphei', she gave you this word."

"I think that
go-to-'elle
is rude. Do I apprehend correctly?"

Temper — was not what would serve him this evening. He made his face quite impassive.

"I made no answer," Jago said. "I am embarrassed to bring you such a report. If you have an answer, I will certainly carry it. Or we can bring this person to your office, Bren-paidhi."

Tempting. "Jago-ji, I've sent you to a fool. You will get an apology, or satisfaction."

"There are less comfortable accommodations than your old apartment, Bren-ji."

"She's in
my
apartment?"

Jago shrugged. "I fear so, Bren-ji. If I were handling her security, I'd advise otherwise."

"I want her moved
out
. Speak to Housing. This is not a woman without enemies."

Jago made a little moue, seemed to be thinking, and finally said, "Her security is very tight — for such a sieve. In terms of live bodies, quite a high level. I speak in confidence."

"I've no doubt.
Tabini's
security?"

"Yes. Which the aiji can relax at will."

Meaning leave her completely unprotected. Jago didn't breach Tabini's security on a whim. That Jago told him anything at all on a matter she didn't need to mention was troubling.

"Did Tabini tell you to tell me this?"

Jago's face was at its most unreadable.

"No," she said.

Which meant narrowly what you could get it to mean — but when Jago took that tone, there was no more information forthcoming.

«
^
»

P
lastic bags,
scavenged from the post office downstairs, the female servants declared in triumph; and tape from the same source. It was Tano's idea, so that a disreputable-feeling human, pushed beyond an already-fading interspecies modesty, could enjoy a real, honest-to-God hot shower, with all the bandages and the cast protected: "Nand' paidhi, you don't want to get water under the cast," was Tano's judgment. 'Trust me in this."

He did. Waterproofed, he leaned against the wall in a real, beautifully tiled, modern bathroom, shut his eyes, breathed the steam, and felt the world swinging around an axis somewhere in the center of his skull.

He was possibly about to commit treason. Was that what you called it, when it was your species as well as your nation in question?

He was at least about to do something astonishingly foolhardy, going into this speech without one written note card for vocabulary, trusting adrenaline to hit and inspiration to arrive in his brain, when it wasn't entirely certain that he owned the strength necessary to make it downstairs or a vocabulary more extensive than occurred on that card. It was the evening, the fairly late evening, of a very, very long day, and the shower and the steam were reducing him to a very, very low ebb of willpower.

"Nand' paidhi," Tano called to him from outside the shower. "Nand' paidhi, I regret, you should come out now."

It was an atevi-engineered luxury, that literally inexhaustible hot water supply. And he had to leave it. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair.

He delayed the length of two long sighs, went out into the cruel brisk air and suffered the tape peeled; allowed himself to be unwrapped, toweled and, by now robbed of all modesty — and with the servants quite properly and respectfully professional — helped into his clothes: a silk shirt, re-tailored with a seam and fastenings up the arm, his coat, likewise sacrificed; soft, easy trousers of a modest and apolitical pale blue, a very good fit.

Once he'd sat down, too, a further toweling of his past-the-shoulders hair and a competently done braid, the only thing for which he'd habitually relied on his servants.

That was when the nerves began to wind tight. That was when he began to feel the old rush of adrenaline, a lawyer going into court, a diplomat going into critical negotiations. He was sitting, feeling the tugs at his hair as Tano plaited it, when Jago, wearing a black leather jacket despite the summer weather, arrived with a written message from Tabini, which said simply,
There will be news cameras. Speak the truth. I have all confidence in you
.

News cameras. One
didn't
damn the aiji to hell with the servants listening, no matter how one wanted to.

"Where's Banichi?" he asked. He was slipping toward combat-mode. He wanted everything that was his nailed down, accounted for, tallied and named. He
knew
Tabini in his slipperiest mode. He wanted Banichi on his side of the fence, not Tabini's. He wanted to know what orders Banichi had, and from whom.

"I don't know, nadi," Jago said. "I only know I'm to escort you, nadi, when you're ready."

There was body armor and a weapon under that black leather coat, he was well sure. With feelings and suspicions understandably running high, it was entirely reasonable. And if Banichi wasn't with him, Banichi was up to something that left his junior partner in charge — possibly serving as Tabini's security, which Banichi also was. He had no way to know.

And no choice but the duty in front of him.

He gathered himself out of the chair and let Tano and the servants help him into the many-buttoned formal coat — which occasioned a little fuss with the discreetly placed fastenings that made the sleeve look relatively intact, and in order for the all-important ribbon-distinguished braid to lie outside the high collar. There were tweaks, there were adjustments, there were sly, curious and solemn looks.

He stood, to the ebon, godlike ladies around him, about the size of a nine-year-old. He felt entirely overwhelmed and fragile, and hoped, God, hoped he retained the things he needed in his head, and wouldn't — God help him — say or imply something disastrous tonight.

"Jago-ji, if you'd bring the computer — I don't think I'D need it, but something might come up."

"Yes," Jago said. "Are we ready, nand' paidhi?"

"I hope so," he said, and was surprised and even moved when Saidin bowed deeply, with: "All the staff wishes you success, nand' paidhi. Please do well for us."

"Nadi. nadiin." He bowed to the servants, who bowed with more than perfunctory courtesy. "You've made my work possible. Thank you ever so much for your courtesy and care."

"Nand' paidhi," the general murmur was. And a second all-round bow, on the tail of which Jago took him in charge, picked up the computer and headed him toward the outer chambers and the door. Tano, wearing a uniform identical to Jago's, overtook them just before the foyer.

Then it was out into the hall of porcelain flowers and down to the general security lift, which all the residents of the top two levels used, down the three floors to the broadest, most televised corridor in the Bu-javid, the entrance to the tashrid.

He was accustomed to the territory. His own office wasn't that far removed. But the halls were lighted from scaffolds supporting television cameras and crews, echoing with the goings and comings of staff and aides. If he'd felt overwhelmed by the servants, he was far more so here, in the entry to the hall itself, where the tall, elegant lords of the Association gathered and talked — more so, as silence fell where he and his escort walked, and became a quiet murmur at his back.

There was a lesser corridor, for the privileged not wishing to be accosted in the aisles, a way into the tashrid, the house of lords, down the division between that and the much larger chamber of the hasdrawad, the commons. The screen which divided the two chambers was folded back, affording direct access to the joined chambers, where he could walk past the stares and the murmurous gossip of the members, down the slant of the figured carpet to that small set of ornately carved benches set aside for dignitaries and invited witnesses and petitioners.

There on the front row of the dignitaries' gallery he could sit alone with his single note card, with the reassurance of Jago and Tano hovering in the standing area near him.

The lords of the Association and the elected representatives of the provinces were drifting in rapidly now. He directed his attention to the card he had yet to memorize, a handful of words that could convey what he wanted to convey without unwanted connotations, a handful of atevi-language definitions he'd devised. FTL was an absolute ticking bomb. He
didn't
want to handle it tonight. He hoped to steer away from technicalities.

From a third of the seats filled there was a sudden abundance of legislators in the aisles, moving with some purpose, and he was not at all surprised, once that influx had found seats, that Tabini-aiji arrived by the same entry he'd used — but Tabini walked to the fore of the chamber. The gallery was jammed with observers, and while Jago and Tano stood steadfastly on guard near Bren, Tabini walked to the podium.

"Nand' paidhi," Tabini said, the speakers echoing out over both halls.

He got up, picked up the computer Jago had set near him, and began his trek down the aisle while Tabini received the standing, silent courtesy of the joint houses, and then declared that the paidhi would, for the first time in this administration, address the houses of government and the provinces conjointly, "to provide expert information on the event in the heavens."

He came up to the secondary microphone with no other fanfare, bowed to Tabini, bowed to the tashrid, to the hasdrawad, and set the computer down.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the Association," was the correct address, and, "Nand' paidhi," he heard back, as the members bowed to him in turn, then sat down.

He drew an insufficient breath, and found a convenient place to lean a supporting arm on the lower rails of a speaker's platform far too tall for him.

A sea of dark, listening, variously expectant faces confronted him.