Invader (44 page)

Then for the rest of the trip the man had told him about what gear you really needed to survive up there, and how if he happened by when he was older, he should come up and see about the summer program the rangers had.

In the way of such things, his mother hadn't let him repeat his escapade. She'd chosen the north slopes of Mt. Allen Thomas the next season, probably to keep him from such hikes, and he and Toby both had taken up siding, to the further detriment of his knees, Toby's elbow, and the integrity of their adolescent skulls.

Saidin said — he should see this place. Atevi appreciated such sights. Atevi found themselves moved by such things. There was something,
something
, at least, that touched a spot in two species' hearts, or minds, or whatever stimulus it took to take a deep breath and feel — whatever two species felt in such places that transcended — whatever two species found to fight about.

He felt less abraded and confused, at least, in the memory-bath. He regretted lost chances — messages unsent: he wondered what Mospheira would think if he asked the international operators to patch him through to the ranger station above Mt. Allen Thomas Resort.

He imagined what contortions the spies on both sides of the strait would go through trying to figure out that code. It all but tempted him.

But he lived his life nowadays just hoping that things he remembered were intact, unchanged, still viable in a rapidly evolving world. He tried to reckon what the man's age had been. He couldn't remember the man's name. The paidhi — with all his trained memory — couldn't recall the man's name.

More, he was afraid to learn the man might have left, or died. He lived all his life somewhere else — afraid to know something he'd left, if he tried to access it, might have changed — or died.

And that particular cowardice was his defense against all that could get to him.

God, what a morass of reasoning. Sometimes —

Sometimes he was such a construction of his own carefully constructed censorships and restraints he didn't know whether there any longer was a creature named Bren Cameron, or whether what he chose to let bubble to the reflective surface of his past defined the modern man, and the rest of him was safely drowned under that shiny surface that swallowed childhood ambitions, childhood dreams, childhood so-called friends — about whom he didn't like to think —

Was
that
the origin of his capacity to turn off that human function and look for something else?

Strip those pieces away and he guessed there wouldn't be a whole man left. Break down the constructions he'd made of his memories and something essential went — that old business with the ranger station, that was a stone that held up other stones, and it would mean something calamitous to him if the man was dead, he supposed —
that
was why he instinctually tucked it close and wouldn't change it, the way he wouldn't change other things, not the hurts, not the flip down the snowy slope that had provided his first experience with mortality, and crutches, not slipping off a mossy stone on a summer hike on the mountain, either, and squishing back to camp in an experience that gave a portrait of the fabled Terraces textures and temperatures and value in his adult and harried mind.

He didn't know what damn good it did to accumulate more and more experiences like that as you lived, so that you could forget them all when you died — unless somehow what mattered was doing something with them: the older you got, the wiser you grew, the more power you got within your hands.

Maybe that was what it meant. Doing something.

Young, you ran the risks the way he'd gone up on that mountain; fresh from college you ran the risks you knew about because you had life to spare and nothing touched the truly fortunate; experienced in infighting and with more power to screw things up than you ever wanted — you sweated blood, and questioned every damn step of the way, foresaw/remembered the disasters, and kept on the track and kept sweating and trying to do your job only because you knew the young and the educated didn't remotely know where they were going.

The ranger might have his own reasons for climbing up there. But he'd gone up that night after a kid who might have made it on his own, and, who knew? Being a kid all the same: maybe if he'd made it on his own, he might have been the same cocksure disaster as Hanks was.

Or he might have tried hiking up there again in a storm, with less luck, in which case, no Bren, Hanks would have succeeded Wilson, Tabini would have been dealing with her and all history might be different. The ranger who'd trekked up the hill in the driving rain hadn't been interested in returning starships and international crises, and probably wouldn't have stopped to listen to a protestation Bren was going to be somebody vital — he'd have just said, as he had said, "Here, kid, get warm."

That man hadn't counted on knowing the outcome of what he did. He'd done what he did for the reasons that brought him to the mountain. He might have hauled a hundred kids down off the trails. He might not know that he'd saved a life. Or damned the planet to lose what he valued.

There was a step in the hall. It wasn't the aiji's advisement he was under arrest. It was Saidin come personally to say dinner was about to be served.

"Still so thoughtful," Saidin said.

"Still so much to do," he said, thinking to himself that he evidently had to write that letter to Ilisidi —

Saying, what? I'm sorry. Evidently we've been doing exactly what you suspected, and I forgot to wonder about what you asked me?

I'm sorry — the assurances I wanted you to give your associates may not be justified?

Stone to damn stone to damn slippery stone. Tabini hadn't arrested him. Therefore Tabini
wanted
him to do that — he guessed so at least. He'd do so after supper. He'd find diplomatic language. He'd find words to explain himself.

His mind was back in that battering blast of cold spray and rain and sound and wind. Everything was gray and his skin was numb. He should have seen that numbness as a danger signal. To him, at that time, it had been environment, like the sound, like the color of the air. He hadn't known he could die of it. He hadn't known he should question his own reactions.

One was supposed to get smarter than that, over time. At least one told oneself so.

«
^
»

S
upper was solitary.
Algini was on duty, Tano was still out seeing to something regarding the clerical office, which had occupied an inordinate amount of Tano's time. Neither Banichi nor Jago was available yet, and by no i means would Saidin sit down to table in front of the staff. Everything he wondered about seemed negative. He still had a difficult letter to phrase to Ilisidi, he hadn't had a reply to his message to Tabini, he hadn't gotten the anticipated message from Jase, and he told himself that
if
he hadn't it wasn't Jase's personal decision; no, that level of responsibility was ultimately by the decision of the ship's captain, possibly the occupation of ship's communications in hot and heavy conspiracy with Mospheira, and it wasn't exactly politic to call the ship and ask whether Jase was available, like some stiffed and forgotten assignation.

Not politic, though an option at this point; but, always to take into account, he spoke for Tabini, at least until arrested, and if Jase missed appointments it wasn't the paidhi's job to cajole Jase into keeping them. The paidhi's job was to report the missed communication to Tabini, which he had done, translate Tabini's response, which he hadn't yet received, always supposing Tabini wasn't trying to restrain his temper and weigh the paidhi's value future and present before ordering him dropped into a quiet place out of the way of trouble.

Harm him — he didn't think so. But he'd given Tabini one hell of a headache, and reason to think that the human advice he'd had wasn't that reliable.

He
hoped
the Jase Graham matter and the whole agreement with the ship wasn't becoming one more item to blow up in his face today, unraveled by better bribes from Mospheira. It would total out his account with no few skeptics in the hasdrawad and the tashrid, and if he could guess a reason for the prolonged silence, he'd bet
Phoenix
was using whatever means it had to discover what Mospheira did have.

If he had to place an interpretation on Graham's missing two days contacting him, they coincided well with Mospheira's new proposal, and he didn't expect the diplomatic obstacles at this point to fall like dominoes: things didn't work that way, not with so many interests to protect.

Which meant, given the initiative toward the ship might fail, the Mospheiran initiative and his offer of cooperation with the President might fail.

In which case — back to square one, with vastly damaged credibility, even granted Tabini left him in charge of anything. If they had to go back to negotiations, Tabini wouldn't budge from what he saw as already his — though Tabini might sound as if he were budging — and come after the matter from a new vantage, one of those small privileges of a leader with consensus pre-voted and as yet unwavering. And he might want to cut off communications for a while. Not what the paidhi would suggest. But —

Maybe — maybe the ship had found some technical glitch in the lander. Maybe they found their target date slipping for safety reasons and they were waiting for reports.

Maybe it just took a long time to analyze the imaging he was sure they were using.

One certainly had to ask what the captain's motives were for speaking so frankly with Mospheira, considering he had to know the mainland picked up the conversations. They could encode, he was relatively certain, using things the Defense Department knew and he didn't.

But the ship didn't do that, unless there was something going through the telemetry.

He could think himself in circles.
Nothing
was worse than sitting in an informational blackout.

He held himself to tea, not liquor, told himself even the quantity of what he'd been pouring down wasn't without effect on the nerves, and he had to stop gulping entire cups of it as the only relief from thought and action — tea that lacked alkaloids was still native to the planet and contained minute amounts of stimulant that could add up.

But, damn, it did keep the mouth from drying. He thought of asking for it iced, which would scandalize the house — and wished the weather would take that pending turn to cooling. The active sea-winds of morning had become a sultry Shejidan night, and good as the concealed ventilation generally was, he longed for autumn, when he could pile blankets on the bed and sleep the night through.
Sleep
was increasingly attractive, even lying abed was — and he still had to draft that letter to Ilisidi.

"Nand' paidhi," a servant came to the tableside to say, "nand' paidhi, the telephone."

Jase, he thought, and left his chair in haste. His glum mood evaporated — he was ready to get on with the business of the ship, the site, the landing, the whole future that otherwise he couldn't deal with.

"Bren?"

Barb.

"Hello? Bren?"

It took a second to catch his breath, switch mental gears, switch languages so he could
think
what Barb wanted. "Yeah," he said.

"Bren, what's the matter?"

'There's nothing the matter."

"You asked me to go over to your mother's."

He remembered. He remembered the conversation with Toby, which didn't rest in the same memory area with Tabini, Ilisidi, and Jase Graham. "Yeah."

"Bren, are we all right to talk?"

"Yeah, yeah, go ahead."

"She's all right. A little spooked. Somebody wrote some letters, somebody kept calling on the phone, leaving messages on the system, got some of her private numbers."

"Private numbers."

"Just things they shouldn't have accessed. She said she was all right. The police are on to it."

Things they shouldn't have accessed. Access numbers. Access to systems. Not random off-the-street trouble, then. That smelled like the Heritage agitators. Connections. Professionals, who'd ring your phone and drive you crazy. "Yeah. Yes. You tell her I'm fine?"

"
Sure." A
silence followed. "
So how are you
?"

"Fine."

"You sounded a little vague when you picked up."

"I suppose I did. I was expecting a business call. Sorry."

"So how are you?"

"The cast is off. No real problems. Thanks for chasing that down."

"
Yeah
, thanks,
Bren
."

"So how are you getting along?"

"
Fine
." Another small silence. "
I
sort of expected you to call me
."

He didn't know what he'd heard for a moment. He replayed it twice in his head and drew a measured breath.

"Bren?"

"Barb, there is no choice. There is no choice. I won't be calling you. You did what you had to do, I think you did the right thing —" He found a certainty in his own mind that he wasn't going back to Mospheira again. Not soon. Or not the same.

But he couldn't say it. Not to Barb. Not to Shawn. He couldn't let them draw the conclusion, or Tabini lost his fair broker. "I think you ought to work on it, give it a chance. Paul's a nice guy."

"
I
love
you,
Bren
."

It wasn't even painful to hear that maneuver, except in the response and comfort-giving it asked of him. And in what it said about her that he'd never wanted to face. That had rung alarm bells the last time they'd talked. And the timing of the phone calls. And her message to him after he'd left. And her not showing up at the hospital. He'd thought in her turning away from him she was giving
him
the reality dose. He doubted all of a sudden that she had it to give.

"Bren?"

Tears. He heard the quaver.