Invader (20 page)

It was too stupid to be a reason. It was too far removed from sanity.

But his political sense kept up a persistent itch that said: A, Given ignorance in the mix, stupidity was at least as common in politics as astute maneuvering; B, Crisis always drew insects; and, C, Inevitably the party trying to resolve a matter had to contend with the party most willing to exploit it.

He found himself, with this voice-tape, sitting in possession of information that led him places he didn't at all want to go — conclusions that on one level were suspect, though informed: a set of conclusions that — even if they didn't fit present reality — still described its behavior — and the Hanks situation — with disturbingly predictive accuracy.

If he went down, humanity was in for a long, long siege of trouble — and might not win the ensuing civil wars, the breakdown of atevi peaceful tech and the acceleration of weapons development: witness planes in Malguri dropping homemade bombs, when Mospheira had made every design attempt to keep atevi aircraft stall rates where it would discourage that development. Humans
never
reckoned on atevi ingenuity, and even the best of the academics kept relying on human history to predict what atevi would logically come up with next.

But atevi ability to solve math problems, applied to design, meant everything you gave atevi mutated before sundown.

And some humans thought you could double-cross atevi, outnumbered in
their
solar system, and keep them planetbound and out of the political question?

That, or there were people with notions of dealing with atevi that the paidhi didn't even want to contemplate.

Departmental policy said: Don't discuss human politics. Don't discuss internal and unresolved debates.

It wasn't the paidhi's business to steer atevi policy to oppose a Mospheiran choice. He didn't have that level of information. He wasn't appointed by any election or process to do that.

But he was elected — and appointed — and trained — and briefed on an executive level on this side of the strait. He
did
know atevi on levels that nobody else, even on the university advisory committee, could inform the State Department.

He sat for a while, while the tape ran down to its end, and there was no more information, there were no more bombs, but the one was enough.

It wasn't that the President had
chosen
to accept the offer — it was that the political process of decision had been set into motion, and the process was going to be dirty, full of fast-moving politics a slow-moving government wasn't going to stay on top of. Thanks to that apparently generous offer, very dirty, very destructive elements were going to push an agenda that could, if somebody didn't take fast action, crack Mospheira's insular, safe little world apart.

Meaning issues that didn't have a damned thing to do with reality. Mospheira didn't understand atevi. Mospheira had never needed or wanted to understand atevi. Just the paidhi did. That was why they appointed him. That was what they paid him to do. So they didn't have to.

And he had to talk to Tabini. Before the legislatures formulated policy. Before they took a public position.

He cut off the first recorder and went in search of Saidin, his coat, and Tano.

It was already a trying day: an unscheduled but urgent luncheon briefing in Tabini's own residence that postponed a scheduled agricultural council meeting downstairs in the Blue Hall and probably started a flood of rumors.

And trying through that stressful affair to convey — to a man who could with a word start an interspecies war — some sense of the dynamics at work in the Mospheiran population: the small percentage of the opposition involved, the substantial danger to atevi interests and claims on the space station of letting relations deteriorate, and the need to hold firm and resolved in the face of hysterical or bribe-bearing voices on either side of the strait who could only want to aggravate the tensions.

That meant coming up with an atevi negotiating position that took into account the things humans were going to need: the paidhi could count off on both hands, at least if not more knowledgeably than the President of Mospheira, critical raw materials and some finished goods needful to the space effort that humans didn't have available on the island — and the paidhi knew what humans either on Mospheira or on the ship would be able and willing to trade — namely money, designs, and full atevi participation in space, once human prejudice and patronage had had its say and sober realization set in — in order for the ship to get what they had to have: workers in numbers going up to that station.

Meaning atevi had to be willing to shut down trade and go to unified bargaining with Mospheira or with the ship, depending on which party proved reasonable.

"That doesn't allow Hanks-paidhi to deal with lord Geigi for oil," Tabini instantly pointed out. "Does it?"

"The antithesis, I assure you, of what we want, aiji-ma.
No
province should make independent deals for anything. Everything in this emergency should go through Shejidan, just as Shejidan approves roads, rail, bridges and dams — trade should go through Shejidan, for the good of all the individual provinces so there isn't, for one thing, undercutting of prices and selling of goods for less than their fair value. Pool all trade, all shipping: establish market value, pay the suppliers, the workers, the shippers on that standard, no exceptions, no profit for the central government, but no getting past it, either. The provincials have to understand they can lose money; and they have to understand the hazard of speaking with more than one voice when they deal with humans, exactly as I said in my speech, aiji-ma. Humans may quarrel among themselves: atevi can't afford to. This is where atevi make up the technological disadvantage: atevi know what they want, they've already voted their consensus, and they can vote, hold fast as a bloc, and be ready to deal while the President of Mospheira is still consulting with committees. Be fast enough and the ship folk may well choose to deal with you rather than Mospheira. At least you can scare Mospheira enough to get a better deal than they'd have given otherwise — and they're still your more natural ally, having dealt with you for two hundred years."

"Interesting," Tabini said. Tabini clearly
liked
that notion. The provincial lords wouldn't like it half as well, count on it. The lords of the provinces — and call a province a convenience of the map that only marginally described the real complexity of the arrangement — were always pulling in various directions for their own profit and for their own power if they could manage it.

"The provincial lords," Bren said, "have to find specific advantage for themselves."

"Believe me that I can find such advantages, in ways they will understand."

Meaning — the paidhi hoped — that the aiji would use bribes, fair, historically negotiated division of revenue, and not bullets.

The paidhi was about to pursue that point — when lady Damiri happened in, sat down at the table, set her chin in her hand, and declared that she couldn't help but overhear.

"Daja-ma," Bren said in confusion.

"Perhaps you'll persuade just
this
provincial, nand' paidhi, of the means with which the Atigeini should deal with Mospheira."

"I — can only urge my host that the Atigeini are in the same position as every powerful house in the Association — that if atevi don't deal as a unit, atevi will be at the mercy of the weakest and most desperate lords who
will
deal with humans when the aiji would urge —"

"When the aiji would urge," Tabini said, "that the provincial lords not sell to the humans, except at a price we agree, and under conditions we agree — with conditions which above all guarantee us access to the space station."

"What will we do with it?" Damiri asked —
not
the feckless question it might seem. "How do we come and go to this possession without this marketplace haggling over transport?"

"Atevi are ready," Bren said, and broke a chain of departmental rules, "for a major leap forward. Atevi are capable of safeguarding their own environment, their own government, and their own future. Atevi will secure access to materials and processes that go far beyond the designs we've already released. Atevi
will
have state-of-the-art earth-to-orbit craft, right along with Mospheira, and the paidhi hopes that atevi do better with advanced power systems than drop bombs on each others' heads, nadiin-nai."

"Does your President say so?"

"Aiji-ma, I say so. You have the Mospheiran President hanging on a frayed rope: there's no way for Mospheira to get critical materials without dealing with atevi. The ship could mine the moon, if it had workers to get the materials to build the robots to get the materials, but that's not practical. It needs supply and it needs workers. There's no way that Mospheirans can come and go at will on their own craft and die paidhi allow atevi to remain only passengers. But — a big
but
, nadiin — we
must
rely on computers. We
must
file flight plans. There
must
be air traffic control up there. Or whatever one calls it. There will be changes, in short, in atevi thinking, in atevi concepts. The paidhi can't prevent that."

Tabini was amused. The experienced eye saw it in the minute lift of a brow. An actual smile chased it.

"Weinathi Bridge in the heavens?"

A notorious air crash — which had persuaded even most provincial lords that precedence in the air couldn't rely on rank and that flung flight plans and standing by them no matter what was a very good idea. Especially in urban areas around major airports.

"We have only one station," Bren said. "Humans and atevi must live there. Beyond trade cities — the station is very close living, very close cooperation."

"This place that killed so many humans. That humans couldn't continue to occupy. Should atevi die for it?"

"The station itself is suitable for living. And can be made far safer than it is. This is a possible place, daja-ma. This is a place where atevi and humans can find things in common, and work in peace."

"A place with no air. No earth under one's feet."

"Just like in an airplane, daja-ma, one seals the doors and pumps air in."

"From where?"

"In this case — I suppose we bring it in tanks from the planet. Or plants can create it. Engineers know these things. The paidhi is an interpreter. If you wish to see plans, daja-ma, I can say they'll no longer be restricted."

"And the working of this ship?"

Not a simple curiosity, he thought, and was on guard. "Not the actual numbers and dimensions and techniques, daja-ma. I know liquid and solid-fuel rockets very well. But what powers this ship, what kind of technology we may have to create down here to bring us up to date with that ship — I don't know."

"Can you find out such things?" Tabini asked. "Can you get them from the ship?"

"I can tell you that I'll try. That eventually — yes, we'll find a way."

"Find a way," Damiri said.

"Daja-ma, in all my lifetime I've always been able to look around me on Mospheira and see the next technological step. For the first time — Mospheirans and atevi will be making whatever next step there is together, into a future we both don't know. I can't promise. I don't know. But atevi will have their chance. That's what I can work toward."

"There is no word," Tabini said, a question, "what this ship wants — beyond maintenance for the station:"

"On a mere guess," Bren said, "the ship's crew is far more interested in the ship and in space than it is in any planet. What they do out there, where they go, what their lives are like — I suppose is very reasonable to them. I suppose it's enough — to them — to have the ship working."

Damiri asked, "Can the ship up there
take
what it wants?"

"I think," Bren said, "daja-ma, that it might possibly, as far as having the power; but what it. wants just isn't so simple as to rob all banks on the planet and go its way. I can't foresee all that it might want, but I can't imagine it taking raw materials and manufacturing things itself. It never did, that I know."

"So what will it want, nadi?"

His hostess
never
accorded him the courtesy of his tide. There was always the imperious edge to the voice; and he glanced at Tabini, ever so briefly, receiving nothing but a straightforward, interested attention.

"Bren-ji," Tabini said, with a casual wave of his fingers. Tabini wasn't unaware. Be patient, that seemed to mean, and he answered the question.

"I think it wants the station to fuel it and repair it if it needs repair."

"Why?"

"So, perhaps, it can leave us for another two hundred years. In the meanwhile — we have the access to the station."

"This is quite mad," Damiri said.

"Bren-ji," Tabini reproved his unadorned answer.

"Daja-ma, the ship puzzles all humans. I can say it would be very much simpler for it to have Mospheirans work for it and not have to deal with atevi. But that would allow Mospheira power that would unbalance everything the Treaty balanced. I completely oppose any such solution. Even if atevi had rather not deal with them — I don't think it wise to take that decision."

"The paidhi
is
human."

"Yes, daja-ma. But most Mospheirans don't want to have their affairs run from space. I can't speak for every official in office, but among ordinary people, and many in office as well, atevi have natural allies. Mospheirans stand to lose their authority over their own lives if certain other Mospheirans, very much like rebel provinces, have their way. To answer your very excellent question, nai-ma — I don't think the ship intends violence. By every evidence, they need the station. They want it the cheapest way possible. We have to prevent some humans from providing it too cheaply, without atevi participation. That's the situation as plainly as I can put it. And we have the leverage to prevent it."

"Bren-ji characterizes the Mospheiran government as indecisive. Incapable of strong decision."