Inheritor (13 page)

He'd not wanted, for one other thing, to lose his credibility in a descent into name-calling and accusations. He'd never wanted to bring the whole of the stresses on him into question in the household here: it would raise concerns even with the staff. But maybe Jase
was
able to understand the complexity of the constraints on him. Maybe he'd been around atevi long enough not to draw wrong conclusions and maybe it
was
time to lay some of the truth on the table, if Jase was listening behind doors. He changed to Mosphei'.

"More than theoretically, Jase, the sons of bitches are calling my mother at three in the morning. She's got a heart condition. — But they're freelance operators so far as I know. Isolationists. Pro-spacers. Anti-spacers. The whole damn gamut, Jase. It's the radical fringe that wants another war. Or an end to building on the north shore. I'm sure Ms. Mercheson has had lunch with them, though I haven't wanted to act as if I were trying to affect
her
independent judgment. They'll be perfectly polite to her. They'll be dressed in their Sunday best and telling her atevi can't be trusted." He knew he'd wandered further than he'd intended, into areas he probably shouldn't discuss with Jase, politically speaking. But if he didn't find a starting point to include Jase on the inside of the information flow, Jase couldn't understand the atevi's chosen isolation, either.

The hell with it, he thought. It
was
time to talk, seriously, about the con job the Mospheiran government was bound to be trying on Yolanda Mercheson; and he'd tried to take the high ground rather than have his own side sound like a con job. But that strategy could backfire, if Jase had gotten some report from Yolanda that painted the other side of the strait as flawless and cooperative; and he wasn't sorry to have hit Jase with the nastier truths of Mospheira's underside.

"There's a lot of humans," he said, in Ragi again, and more calmly, "who don't want atevi to go to space. And among those, some are crazy. Some are honest, law-abiding citizens."

"An infelicity of two: you mean — some are neither."

That was a first. He
was
pleased. If Jase had gotten that far, they
could
talk, and he was ready to do so. "Just so, nadi. Better and better. Another such improvement and I might well present you at court."

"Not — quite ready for that, I think."

"But very much better. I don't know if information helps the digestion, but that's the truth from my side. What's yours?"

A slight hesitation. Then: "My father's dead."

For a moment he didn't even hear it. Or didn't believe he could have heard what he thought he had.

"God, Jase. — When?" He couldn't figure out how Jase would learn such a thing. Whenever the ship called, it created a stir in the household; and he hadn't heard of it.

"Four days ago. — I got it from
Yolanda
. I haven't even been able to call my mother. Security wouldn't let me call the ship because you hadn't left instructions and I couldn't reach you."

That
was the distress over the period out of contact. That was the aborted conversation before supper.

"Damn.
Damn
, Jase, what do I say? — I'm sorry."

"It's one of those things, you know. Just one of those things. He just — just was working —" The glass trembled in Jase's fingers, and he lifted it and drank. "An accident. Yolanda had talked to the ship. She heard. She thought I already had. She offered condolences — All right?" The glass met the small table. Click. "But I haven't been able to call
her
back. I found out four days ago and I haven't been able to get hold of you. I haven't been able to call the ship."

He had to revise a great many estimations of Jase, with this performance, both cool-headed and confrontational, recklessly so:
Here's what I know, be damned to you, I want off this planet
.

No
wonder
Jase had been bearing down on the lessons in the last several days. To the point of hysteria, alternated with cold, clear, bloody-minded function. He was speaking now in Ragi and doing it with steady self-control.

"Jase. I didn't hear. I don't know why I didn't hear. And I don't know why you didn't get a call from the ship. I'll ask official questions. I'm extremely sorry."

The facial nerves were
very
well under control, as perhaps his were. He forgot, he feared, to adjust between languages. Between mindsets, he forgot to respond in the human sense. He
forgot
to use human expressions.

"Jase." He switched to Mosphei' and, like an actor assuming a role, brought expression consciously to his face. "I didn't know. I'm going to find out why I didn't know. I know that atevi will be concerned that you didn't learn this in any proper way."

"Can we use the word 'care' here? Are we finally permitted?"

"In this, Jase, I assure you the staff would care."

"Shed tears, I'm sure."

"No." He refused to back up from the attack, and equally refused to attack back. "But making demands like that serves no one. — I'm
sorry
. I'm extremely sorry. I put you off and I'm sorry. I wish I'd been here. I am here now. Can I do anything?"

"No. I've been keeping up with my studies." Jase's tone was light, his eyes distracted by something across the room. The wall, perhaps. Or a blowing curtain. "It's the only choice I have, isn't it?"

"Is your mother all right?"

Slight pause. Restrainedly, then: "I have no idea."

"Damn. Damn, Jase. I
will
straighten out the phone situation."

"I'd like to talk to my mother. Privately. If you can arrange that."

He didn't know what to say. "I'll arrange something. As soon as I can. Do you want to speak to her tonight?"

"If she's gotten to sleep, I'd rather not disturb her this late." The ship-folk had sensibly adjusted their day-night schedule to the Mospheira-Shejidan time zone. And it was still evening up there on the ship, as it was evening here, but he didn't argue that fine point with Jase, either.

Excuse, he thought. And asked himself why, and with what motive, and didn't come up with charitable answers, a reaction he didn't trust in himself.
He
was angry. He didn't know why that was, either. He didn't think he was angry at Jase. Or the staff. Having just talked about his own home situation, he knew why he
might
be angry.

He wasn't sure, though, why he
was
angry, or at what he could even be angry, and was far less certain that his anger would do any possible good to anyone.

The servant came in, hesitated, and at a slight lifting of his hand, poured two more drinks.

But Jase said, after the young woman had left, "I'll take mine to my room, if you don't mind, nadi. I'm feeling unsteady."

Jase rose. Bren did. One part of him said in spite of Jase's evasions and in spite of his anger he should go over to Jase and put his arm around his shoulders. He should offer — something of an emotional support.

But he didn't. As Jase never quite addressed him with the intimate form in Ragi, though he did it toward Jase.

Jase had never made such gestures toward him in that interpersonally sensitive language. Maybe Jase didn't think he was of status to do it. Maybe there was another reason.

Whatever it was, they'd never made such gestures toward one another, certainly not intruded so far as an embrace, between the only two humans on the mainland. He'd held out a hand to welcome Jase when he'd pulled him from the capsule and into the world. Jase had accepted that hand, but hadn't met him with the enthusiasm or the openness the transmissions from the ship had prepared him to expect.

The one gesture, nothing more, from either side. And somehow they'd found no way to begin again. Not in six months.

It seemed impossible to try in this situation, when sensibilities were raw-edged and, he admitted it, when he wasn't sure he'd mean any such move toward a greater closeness with Jase, because of an anger the causes of which he wasn't himself right now sure of.

He stood there as Jase walked away and out the door.

«
^
»

M
aybe he should
have made the try. Maybe, Bren thought, he should go after Jase all the same and make the gesture and try to sort out exactly why and at what he was angry, and why (he detected so, at least) Jase was so deeply angry, too.

But at such a juncture, what he did could intrude on sensibilities and shove the situation beyond all reason. He might instead do something he could bring to Jase as a peace offering. He might take measures to calm the situation. He might try to ease the strain on Jase and then talk to him, once the anger had settled. In both of them.

He saw the servant standing at the door, hands folded, waiting for his order, aware, perhaps that something was wrong.

"Is nand' Saidin still on duty?"

"I believe she has retired, nand' paidhi, but I doubt very much she is asleep. Shall I call her?"

"No. Is nadi Tano awake? Or nad' Algini?"

"Both or either, nand' paidhi. Shall I call them?"

"Do," he said; and stood sipping his drink until a quiet step and a shadow in the doorway advised him of presence.

"Nadi?" Tano asked. Both of them had come, and entered the room at his implied invitation.

"Nadiin," he said, intensely aware how they would blame themselves for a failure in information. "Jase says his father has died. He had this news from Mospheira, he says, four days ago, and complains he was not able to contact his mother on the ship because security couldn't clear a call to the ship or contact me. Are we able to remedy this?"

"I will make immediate inquiry, nand' paidhi," Algini said, ever the proper, to-the-point one; and Tano, equally atop any business he was supposed to monitor: "The record shows the call from Mospheira. The staff has it on tape. It was in Mosphei'. Do you wish to hear it?"

"I do." It was his business to. Someone had better find out what was going on, and how much else that message had contained, and he was the one who admitted to speaking the language. He was sure that certain atevi did, even that certain atevi close to him were staying up nights increasing their fluency at Jase's expense, while Jase persisted in resorting to human language, but with what accuracy atevi were understanding the biology behind the vocabulary, he was far from certain. "Did nand' Jase seem upset?"

"That was not in the report, nadi. He stayed to his room a great deal, that was all. One phone call came to him from Mospheira, late in the evening, four days ago. No others are on the record."

He didn't have enough information to cue them to report information they might not know they had.

More, he had to be extremely careful. Everything at the interface of atevi responsibility and human emotions was difficult and subject to error. As long as he'd lived among atevi, he could guess one's man'chi toward a lord, and he knew the specific man'chi of Tano and Algini and others toward Tabini, but he knew very little of their family ties or how man'chi to a lord fit into man'chi toward a mother or a father. He'd
heard
Tano speak of his own father, and of a desire to have the man's good opinion, but he also knew that Tano had defied his father's wishes to pursue a Guild career. He'd had Tano recommend relatives for posts as 'reliable persons,' a reliability one could attribute to man'chi, and the fact that it wasn't biologically likely for treason to operate where man'chi existed.

He knew that Damiri had defied her clan to associate herself romantically and politically (or should that be, politically and romantically) with Tabini, who was close to an ancestral enemy of her clan, a close neighbor in the Padi valley holdings, and certainly persona non grata with uncle Tatiseigi, the head of the Atageini clan. Antipathy on the part of a clan head (toward whom Damiri held man'chi) certainly hadn't daunted Damiri — but then, few things did.

The one wisdom about atevi family relations that two centuries of paidhiin had gathered was that the bonds of affection that held a human family together were not only not present, they weren't biologically possible.

Different hardwiring.

Different expectations.

Different familial relationships and different necessities.

One didn't know, for instance, what an atevi child expected of his parents. Food and shelter up to a certain point, yes. The point of separation seemed to be about seventeen years, maybe twenty. That was all the accumulated experience could say. Anything else was rated speculative, in the textbooks. He himself tentatively theorized that as humans had to mature beyond emotional dependency on their parents, atevi had somehow to get out of man'chi toward their parents or the family unit would never mature. There had to be a psychological break, somewhere, for the culture to function beyond the family.

"If this were an ateva who had heard this news," he asked the two closest of his companions and guards, persons who, if they were human, he would have called friends, "what would other atevi expect of him? Principally, what would other atevi expect him to feel, or do, under these circumstances?"

"If relations with his father were good," Tano said, "then one would expect sadness, nand' paidhi. He would go to his household. He would bury his father. He would confirm man'chi within his house and within his associations."

Confirm man'chi.
Confirm
man'chi. With atevi, it was not only an overriding emotion. It was
the
overriding emotion. A homing instinct under fire. The place you'd go. The person you'd rescue from a burning building.

"In what manner can one
confirm
man'chi, nadi, if I may ask such a question? Please decline to answer if I cross some line of decency."

"An expression, nand' paidhi. It's an expression. One visits the household. One remembers. One assembles the living members of the household, for one thing, to know where their man'chi may lie now that this man'chi is put away. The household has to be rebuilt."