Invader (53 page)

"I take it this is not general knowledge."

"Common gossip. Not common knowledge, if the paidhi takes the difference in expressions."

"I do take it."

"This is a very dangerous time," Banichi said, "within the Association. Quite natural that stresses would tend to manifest. In Mospheiran affairs… likewise a time of change. As we understand." Banichi reached inside his jacket and pulled out a silver message cylinder. "Tabini asked us to brief you at least on the essentials of the neighbors. — And to destroy this
and
the accompanying tape after you've read it."

Tabini's seal.

Damn, Bren thought, and took it with no little trepidation. He unrolled it, read, very simply put, after Tabini's heading,

Please observe great caution, do nothing to elude your security even for a moment. We expect a great deal of trouble, on very good advisement from very good sources.

The whereabouts of Hanks remains, specifically, a question. But we would not be surprised to find that she has been moved near Taiben, since the conspirators are few, their connections are strong in that vicinity, and they wish to bring as few as possible others of their fringes into public knowledge should matters go wrong for them. Certainly their more cautious supporters will not want to commit until and unless they demonstrate success.

I will not at all be surprised if individuals frequent in Hanks' association initiated the matter. She seems to be operating in some freedom. Banichi has a tape copy of a communication we intercepted on the mainland. Listen to it and see if you can make sense of it.

He expected, dammit, before Banichi gave him the tape and Jago got up and brought him a recorder to play it on, that the tape involved not ship-to-ground communications but very terrestrial connections indeed.

And that the front of the tape would be a great deal of computer chatter — as Deana's access code went through Mospheira's electronic barriers like a knife through butter.

Damn right her authorizations weren't pulled. Completely live. Completely credited, where they were going. He jacked in, captured-and-isolated, read-only, as scared of those codes near his computer as he would have been of a ticking bomb.

The text was, again foreseeably, scrambled. He tried three code sets with his computer before one clicked.

After that, text flowed on his screen.

Cameron has turned coat and threatened the ship with unspecified atevi hostilities in order to have them land under the aiji's control. He has meanwhile participated with the aiji's authority to place me under communications blackout and, I am warned by reliable sources, to have me assassinated. The motive is complex, resting in the aiji's ambitions to make the precedent of central control of dams, power grids, and rail apply to all natural resources, which will strip the provincial aijiin and the landholders of financial resources and centralize all international trade, with monopoly to the aiji in Shejidan, and consequently price controls which will considerably enrich the central government at the expense of local governments and rightful landholders.

Cameron has cooperated in this plan, whether wittingly or unwittingly, has actively backed the nationalization of resources, has suggested boycott as a tactic, has gone on a remarkable excursion to a remote observatory supported by the aiji of Shejidan and brought back a warped-space theory that I strongly believe is not based on atevi research, but on unauthorized translation of classified human mathematical concepts. This is calculated to disturb certain atevi conservative religious beliefs which are in stark contrast and political opposition to the aiji, who is not a believer in any philosophy, most particularly to throw certain provinces into religious upheaval and certain philosophical leaders into disrepute and disregard.

I
am making this transmission from a secure base afforded me by the persons who have placed their lives in jeopardy by opposing this power grab on the part of the central government. In my judgment, we will do well to make this situation extremely clear to the representative from the ship if she in fact reaches Mospheira alive, which my informants suggest may not happen. The aiji may assassinate this individual and put the blame on his opposition. Since he clearly controls the Assassins' Guild, getting a filing against his political enemies at that point would be possible. This would also, I am informed, serve as a purge of the Guild, as all Guild members opposing his aims would very quickly find themselves targeted by the aiji's very extensive network
.

I urge under the strongest terms that the government recall Cameron, revoke his authority and his codes, and demand an explanation of his actions, which are by no means in the interest of Mospheira, of the human population in general, or of atevi citizens. I do not know and cannot ascertain whether he is aware what he is aiding or to what purpose his advice and ability is being used, but I consider that my life is in present danger from agencies with whom he is working. Therefore I will move from place to place and attempt to preserve my usefulness in my job.

Please pass a message to my family that I am at the moment safe and well and protected by persons who have acted in behalf of their freedom and rights of self-determination.

He didn't swear. He didn't want expression to cross his face — he wasn't sure he was going to translate this message exactly, at this time, or in the foreseeable future. He rested his elbow on the armrest and his knuckle against his lip, thinking. He'd defined the beginning of the section; he defined the end; he captured, reran it, rereading to determine that, no, there was no hint of it being taken under duress, there were none of the words to signal that such was the case — and he'd hope, in a piece like that, to see words like
discorrespondance, decorrelationary
, or
contrarecidivistic
, that to a human eye didn't quite belong in typical text in the worst diplomatese — the standard freehand signal that the whole piece was under duress, always a worry when a note that explosive came in on computer-to-computer transmission.

But there was no such clue. He read it a third time simply to absorb the tenor and content, to try to strip out emotional reactions, and to ask himself honestly whether there was any remote, even astronomically remote or conceivable likelihood that Deana was actually right and he was wrong.

That Tabini's true aim in the current crisis was elimination of dissent.

No, dammit, it was
not
the purpose of Tabini's actions. It was not the action of the aiji whose answer to rebels in Malguri had generally been understated, as witness Ilisidi's corroboration that things were settled; the aiji whose punitive use of the Guild had been, if at all during his administration, so covert as to be undetected. It was not the action of the aiji who, if reports were true, having perhaps assassinated his own father, at least declined to assassinate his grandmother, who was still in all accounts a very reasonable culprit in the demise of her son.

One added sideways and up and down and power grab didn't describe Tabini in the least.

It didn't describe Tabini's overenthusiastic (by Ilisidi's lights) embrace of things human; or his willingness, in personal argument with common citizens, constantly to push court suit and trial as an enlightened substitute for registered feud; his insistence to push air traffic control as the system countrywide in spite of lordly objections
because
it made sense, even if it sequenced five and six commoner pilots in line ahead of provincial aijiin and their precious purchased numbers in the landing sequence — it also kept aircraft from crashing into each other and raining destruction on urban Shejidan.

It didn't, as Banichi had pointed out, describe the aiji's support among the commons. Elected by the hasdrawad. It was a very enlightening view of
why
the Western Association was stable. Human scholars called it economic in-terdependency, and believed the public good and public content propped Tabini's line in power — which might be the same information; but the economic changes Jago mentioned, bringing real economic power to the trades and the commons — yes, it was the same thing, but it was the atevi side of the looking-glass. And in the concept of
man'chi
, and atevi electorates — it was an atevi explanation for the peace lasting.

Because the hasdrawad wasn't about to vote against the interests of the commons. Which the hasdrawad hadn't seen as congruent with Ilisidi's passionate opposition to things the hasdrawad wanted, like more gadgets, more trade, more commerce, roads if they could push them, rail if that would move the freight, and to hell with the lords' game reserves: wildlife didn't rank with trains as long as wildlife, the only atevi meat supply, was in good supply in general. He'd heard the arguments in Transportation, in Commerce, in Trade… always the push for the big programs. Which no lord wanted if it wasn't in
his
district or his interest — or, contrarily, if it infringed his public lands, meaning the estate he used, and on which he hunted, during his seasons of residency.

He was aware of Banichi and Jago sitting opposite him, across the small service table. He was aware of them watching his face for reactions — and he shot Banichi a sudden, invasive stare.

"You
can't
have broken the code in this document," he said to Banichi.

Banichi's face was completely guarded, not completely expressionless. A brow lifted, and the appraising stare came back at him.

One didn't pursue the likes of Banichi through thickets of guesswork and try to pin him down. Banichi wouldn't cooperate with such petty games.

One went, instead, straight ahead.

"You know this is from Hanks to Mospheira. And you know who she's with and what they'll have told her."

"One can certainly make a fair surmise."

"Hence what you just told me. About the election. About the hasdrawad."

"Bren-paidhi, what Tabini-aiji asked us to tell you. Yes."

"Meaning a handful of lords want to restore
their
rights at the expense of the commons."

"One could hold that, yes. And, yes, if that is Hanks reporting to Mospheira, and the persons who have her have let her do this,
and
she's done it willingly, one does rather well believe that she's at least convinced them she believes them. I take it the report she's made supports their view."

"You take it correctly. She has the opportunity, I'll be frank, to use words that would negate everything she says even if they did have a translator standing over her shoulder. There's no linguistic evidence an atevi dictated it word by word, and I'm not pleased with the content."

"I should have shot this woman," Jago muttered, "on the subway platform. I would have saved the aiji and the Association a great deal of bother."

"I've a question," Bren said, and with their attention: "Ilisidi — has always — to me — supported preservation of the environment, preservation of the culture. Not preservation of privilege."

"But," Jago said, "one must
be
a lord to assure the preservation of the fortresses, the land holdings, the reserves. A lord on his own can knock down ancient fortifications, rip up forest — it belongs to him. No association of mere citizens can stop him. And ,no decree of the hasdrawad can dispossess the lords. The tashrid can veto, with a sufficient majority."

The airport at Wigairiin, he thought. The fourteenth-century fortifications. Knocked down for a runway.

For a lord's private plane. The lord's ancestors built the fortress. The lord inheriting it knocked the wall down, the tourists and posterity be damned.

"Do brickmasons and clericals on holiday… ever tour Wigairiin?" he asked — clearly perplexing Banichi and Jago.

"One doesn't think so," Jago said. "But I could find out this information, if there's some urgency to it."

"Nothing so urgent. One just notes — that such ordinary people do tour Malguri. With the dowager in residence. Whose doing is that?"

"Ultimately," Banichi said, "Tabini's."

"But Ilisidi has made no move to prevent it."

"Hardly prudent," Jago said.

"Nevertheless," he said.

"If some human reason prompts you to justify the dowager," Banichi said, "I would urge you, paidhi-ji, to accept atevi reasons to reserve judgment."

Things were at a bad pass when his atevi security had to remind him where things atevi began and things human ended.

"One respects the advice," he said. "Thank you. Thank you both — for your protection. For your good sense, in the face of my… occasional lapses in judgment — and security."

"Please," Jago said, "stay within our guard at Taiben. Take no chances."

He looked straight at Jago, and imagined, the way he'd imagined Jago avoiding him for the number of hours, that she intended the meeting of the eyes, that she looked at him in a very direct, very intimate way. Which made him flinch and duck.

"Considering all this," he said, trying to recover his train of thought, "in atevi ways the paidhi may be too foreign to reckon —
how
did Ilisidi know about Barb the morning after I'd gotten the news? How do you think she knew that fast, if not directly from Damiri's staff? And why should Damiri and Ilisidi associate?"

There was a sober look on both opposing faces.

"Tabini has asked himself that very serious question," Banichi said. "And one does recall where Ilisidi is guesting today."

"Has he asked Damiri about it?" a human couldn't refrain from asking.

"Far too direct," Jago said. "We do lie, nadi-ji. Some of us do it very well. Certain of us even take public offense."

"Do
you
believe Damiri to be honest?"

"One can believe that Damiri-daja is quite honest," Banichi said, "and still know that she might be closer to her uncle's wishes than Tabini would wish. That is honest, paidhi-ji."

The only thing showing under the wings at Taiben was the endless prospect of trees, and at the very last the rail that ran between the airport and the township at Taiben, and the estate of Taiben, at opposite ends of the small rail line, two spurs.