Inheritor

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CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28

POPULAR LIBRARY EDITION

Copyright © 1996 by C.J. Cherryh. All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by Dorian Vallejo.

Map by Jane S. Fancher and Lynn Abbey

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

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T
he wind blew
from the sea, out of the west, sweeping up to the heights of the balcony and stirring the white tablecloth with a briskness that made the steaming breakfast tea quite welcome. The view past the white-plastered balustrade was blue water, pale sky, and the famous cliffs of Elijiri, from which, the thought had crossed Bren Cameron's mind, wi'itikiin might just possibly launch themselves.

But no, the sea was surely too great a hazard for the small, elegant gliders.

"Eggs," lord Geigi urged with a wave of his fingers. It was a delicate preparation, a sort of crusted souffle, eggs of a species the cook swore were innocent of toxins for the human guest.

Bren trusted himself to his staff, Tano and Algini having made his sensitivities to certain native spices quite clear to the cook; and having made equally clear, he was sure, the consequence of such an accident to the reputation of lord Geigi, who had a personal stake in not poisoning him. He allowed the servant to pile on a second helping of the very excellent spiced dish. Rare that he found something he liked that he dared eat in quantity — it was a piece of intradepartmental wisdom that the way to survive atevi cuisine was to vary the intake and not allow the occasional trace of an objectionable substance to become three and four traces at the same meal — but Tano and Algini thought this dish should be perfectly safe.

Geigi was pleased, clearly, at his enthusiasm for the cuisine, pleased in the crisp, clean air of a seaside morning, pleased in the presence of an important guest. Geigi's appetite ran to another, far larger helping of the souffle. Black-skinned, golden-eyed, towering head and shoulders taller than any tall human, besides being gifted with an alkaloid-tolerant metabolism, Geigi, like any ateva of the mainland, viewed food as a central point of hospitality, the consumption of it a mark of confidence and assurance of honesty, understandable in a society in which assassins were an important guild, and a regular recourse in interpersonal and political disputes.

Such, as happened, were Tano and Algini, watching over Bren's shoulder, standing near this breakfast table on the balcony; such, Bren was very sure, were the pair who hovered on Geigi's side of the table, near the balustrade. Gesirimu, Tano had said, was the woman's name, and Casurni, her senior partner — the pair in a dark, fashionable cut of clothes perfectly in character for a lord's private security. And one assumed Tano knew. One assumed that, among the thousands of members of the Assassins' Guild, the highest did know each other by reputation and, more importantly, by man'chi — that word something like loyalty, that meant nothing to do with hire, or birth, or anything humans were equipped to understand.

But it wasn't necessary that humans understand the passions of atevi minds and souls — at least, it never had been necessary that humans understand, so long as all humans in the world — save one — occupied the island of Mospheira, which lay some distance across the haze of the blue and beautiful strait the other side of that balcony.

That was the state of atevi-human affairs under which Bren had begun his tenure in office not so many years ago. Translator, Foreign Affairs Field Officer, he was, in atevi terms, the paidhi-aiji, the
only
human permitted by the Treaty of Mospheira to set foot on the mainland.

He, Bren Cameron, descendant of spacefarers stranded for nearly two centuries on the earth of the atevi, was the one human alive who walked and lived among the atevi, and Bren, at twenty-seven, had it as his lifelong business and sacred trust to mediate the differences between atevi and humans.

Until last year that business had been much the same as that of his predecessors. Most of his days had been spent in the atevi capital of Shejidan, rendering the vocabulary of atevi documents into the one permitted human-atevi dictionary for the human University of Mospheira, for use in the training of other paidhiin. A years-long program from which the twenty percent who did go all the way through to the degree in Foreign Affairs disappeared into the bowels of the Foreign Office, all but the one scoring next highest marks: the paidhi-successor, the other tenured graduate of the program (and usually not a voice of any importance at all), who waited in the wings for the Field Officer to quit, die in office, or need a two week vacation. As all the others waited, in the order of their scores, as the paidhi's support staff in the Foreign Office. That was the program. That was one job the paidhi did. Train one successor and write dictionaries.

The other job was to serve as the conduit through which the Mospheiran State Department made a slow transfer of human technology into the atevi economy. The paidhi did have definite importance in that regard. And he served as his government's eyes and ears in the field. He reported what data he gathered; he took requests from the atevi government and relayed them; he handled customs questions, and the occasional legal tie-up or bureaucratic snag. Based on what information he passed through, the University of Mospheira and the Mospheiran State Department slowly made decisions about what technology to release — debated sometimes for years over the release of a
word
, let alone, say, microchips. The goal was to keep the technology compatible, to keep, say, the standards such that a grade of wire produced on the continent could be connected inside a toaster built on Mospheira with no thought of difficulty.

He'd never looked for things to change appreciably in his lifetime, not the toaster, not the society and not the level of technology. Steady, economically stable progress: that had been the design for the atevi-human future. Interlocked economies, meshing just like perfectly standardized nuts and bolts.

Now, just since last year, there was one more human on the mainland, one Jase Graham, born lightyears removed from the earth of the atevi, and certainly not a product of the University's Field Officer candidate program.

And Jase Graham's arrival was why he, Bren, was sitting on lord Geigi's balcony eating a souffle of spiced eggs and relying on two assassins' professional judgment that there was nothing by design or default harmful in the dish.

The situation and his job had changed radically overnight when the starship had turned up, the same starship that, two hundred years ago, had left his ancestors to fend for themselves among the atevi. The atevi government (which had elevated intrigue to an art form) had consequently suspected the human government of Mospheira (which Bren well knew couldn't site a new toilet in a public park without political dithering) of double-crossing atevi high, wide, and with considerable cleverness for nearly two hundred years.

It was not the case, of course; there had been no human double-cross of the atevi, though for a time even the paidhi had had to wonder whether his own government really had been more clever than his park-toilet estimate. The humans on Mospheira had had no idea that the ship would return. They had, in fact, believed quite to the contrary.

As it had turned out, the State Department on Mospheira had truly reacted as desperately and as ignorantly as he'd feared. They had tried to contact the ship directly, and in secrecy, to secure its alliance exclusively for Mospheira.

They'd tried, in short, to shut the atevi out of the dealings.

If they'd asked, Bren could have told them they were fools, that you didn't double-cross the atevi. To be sure, the State Department at first had been unable to secure his advice; but they hadn't listened to him once he did get through, no — since his advice hadn't agreed with what their fears and their biases said they should do in responding to the Atevi Threat.

The atevi government had, of course, found them out. Sharp atevi eyes had spotted the new star that attached itself to the abandoned space station in the heavens, and atevi antennae had intercepted the communications between Mospheira and the ship. The atevi had promptly taken action, in which Bren had been inextricably involved, that had placed them in direct communication with the starship.

Mospheira's maneuvers hadn't won the sympathy of the starship, which had turned out willing to deal with the atevi and with the human enclave on an equal basis —
anyone
, the starship maintained, was welcome up in space, but the one thing they wouldn't agree to was time.

The ship wanted help, manpower to repair the station abandoned two centuries before, and they wanted it immediately, or as immediately as a world without a manned spacecraft could build one. The ship cared nothing about the careful work of centuries not to destabilize the atevi government — which in turn supported the atevi industrial base, which in turn supplied the factories and shops on Mospheira and the
human
economy.

But with the mutability of self-interest, Mospheira's attitudes had shifted. Of
course
the State Department supported the atevi government, and of course it was more than willing to work with the atevi to obtain materials the atevi needed to go into space equally with humans, and of course it supported the paidhi, any paidhi the atevi wanted, just so the Treaty stood firm.

Meanwhile the average human citizen was both scared of the ship in the skies, which bid to change a way of life they'd thought would go on forever, and scared of the atevi, who had defeated them once in war and who were alleged in popular understanding to be utterly incomprehensible to humans — this at the same time atevi were supposedly growing more and more like humans, having television and fast food, skiing and soccer — which of course defined everything.

So somehow, without destabilizing the atevi, as they'd been taught all their lives would happen if someone slipped too much tech to atevi too fast, they were going to merge the cultures instantly and have universal peace.

No wonder the population of Mospheira was confused.

As a result, Bren Cameron no longer exclusively served the President on Mospheira who'd allowed that state of confusion to develop. He damn sure no longer exclusively served the higher-ups in the State Department, who'd tried to browbeat the Foreign Office and to use the situation for domestic political leverage.

The Foreign Office within the State Department, well, yes, he was loyal to them — if the commotion his actions had caused had left anyone of
his
staff and
his
superiors in office.

He'd last heard from his old chief Shawn Tyers two months ago. His personal bet was that the President wouldn't dare jerk Shawn out of office, because without Shawn, the Mospheiran government had
no
chain on the paidhi. But even the two months since he'd last talked by phone was a long time, and the silence since implied that Shawn had no power to call him as often as he'd like; or, evidently, to send him mail.

And by now (unless Shawn had somehow protected within the system the computer codes Shawn had ingeniously slipped him on his last trip home) the Field Officer's access codes to the Mospheiran computer net were useless. His access to Shawn himself grew increasingly less assured.

He didn't know the true distribution of power in Mospheiran governmental offices any longer. He knew who
might
be in charge. And for that reason he wouldn't link his precious computer to Mospheiran channels right now for all the fish in the briny sea — because without the protection of updated codes and the access they gave, some electronic disease might come flashing back to its vulnerable systems from people who really didn't want his computer to hold the records it did.

A situation that half a year ago had had the Foreign Secretary hiding computer codes in a cast on the paidhi's arm didn't inspire the paidhi to confidence in the State Department even at that time, and his government having since then reacted in internal partisan panic and having done things and issued statements which, unmediated, could have blown the fragile peace apart, he didn't think the situation had improved.