Inheritor (49 page)

"Are we going to run?" Jase said. "From what?"

"It's just an 'in case.'"

Jase gave him one of those looks.

"It's a possibility, nadi," Bren said, and then wished he hadn't said. He wished he'd said, To hell with you, and not shaved the meaning one more time. "You're not going to find absolutes in this situation. There aren't any. I'm sorry. I knew I was asking for a hard time up here when I turned matters over to other people. I knew last night things were getting complicated. I figured — maybe we'd get a chance to go down to the water. Somehow. And things might not even involve us."

"Once we left the fortress," Jase said in Mosphei', "I knew we weren't going fishing."

"Because you knew I'd lie? You don't know that."

There was lengthy silence.

Then Jase said, "We were still going fishing? All around us, people with weapons. People on radios. Hanks. We were going fishing."

"Well, we will." It sounded lame even to him, in what he began to see as a long string of broken promises, broken dates, incomplete plans — not professional ones, but personal. He couldn't explain all that was going on. Jase didn't understand the motivations. And God knew what conclusions he'd draw.

The silence persisted some distance more. He wasn't there for the moment. He was across a table from Barb. Barb was saying, When? When,
really
, Bren?

"You really
tell
yourself we're going fishing," Jase said, "don't you?"

"Jase, if I don't plan to do it, we'll damn sure never get there. At least," he added, beginning to be depressed, "if you plan a dozen trips, one happens."

"Are all Mospheirans like you?"

He'd like to think not. He liked to think, on the contrary, that he was better than the flaws that frustrated him in his countrymen. But it was an island full of people living their safe routines, their weekend trips to the mountains, their outings to the market, like clockwork, every week, sitting on a powder keg, electing
presidenti
who lived the same kind of lives and left decisions to their chief contributors rather than those with any knowledge or insight.

Delusion played a large part in Mospheiran attitudes.

Delusion that they had a spacecraft, or could build one, with no facility in which to do it.

Delusion that they could fix their deficits when there was suddenly a great need and all their bets came due.

Self-delusion to which, apparently, he was not immune.

"Lifestyle," he said, with self-knowledge a bitter lump in his chest. "But I still do plan to go fishing, Jase."

"Just not this trip."

"Even this trip, dammit! Security alerts go on all the time. I
live
with it! In between times, I relax, if I can get a few hours. Nine tenths of the time nothing happens or it happens elsewhere and life goes on. If you've planned a fishing trip, it might be possible. We can rent the gear. And hire a boat."

"It's a nervous way to live."

"It is when you park a bloody huge ship over our heads and offer the sun, the moon, and the stars to whoever gets there first1 It makes the whole world a little anxious, Jase!"

"Was life more peaceful before we came?"

"Life was absolutely ordinary before you came. You've set the whole world on its ear. Don't you reckon that? Absolutely ordinary people's lives have been totally disrupted. Absolutely ordinary people have done things they'd never have done."

"Good or bad?"

"Maybe both."

They rode a while more in silence. He watched Jago ahead of him, by no means ordinary, neither she nor Banichi.

He
loved
Jago. He loved both of them.

"A
lot
of both," he said.

And a long while later he asked, "
Why
did the ship come back?"

"Weren't we supposed to?"

He thought about that a moment, thought about it and wondered about it and said to himself of course that was what the ship did and was supposed to do: go places between stars. And this was where other humans were, and why wouldn't it come here?

But he always argued the other point of view — everyone's point of view: Barb's, his mother's, Jase's. He'd elaborated in his own mind Jase's half-given answers in the days when Jase hadn't been able to say much in Ragi and after that when the pressure mounted to get the engineering translation settled. They'd talked fluently about seals and heat shields. But when he'd asked, in Mosphei', as late as a handful of days before his tour, Where were you? Jase had drawn him diagrams that didn't make any sense to him.

And he'd said to himself, when he hadn't understood Jase's answer or gotten any satisfaction out of it, well, he wasn't an astronomer and he didn't understand the ship's navigation; or maybe space wasn't as romantic as he'd thought it was — or maybe — or maybe — or maybe.

Well, but. But. But.

Did delusion play a part in it? Or a human urge to fill out Jase's participation and make excuses for behavior that otherwise wasn't satisfying his expectations.

The ship was doing as it promised. The spacecraft was becoming a reality.

But in his failure to find the friendly, cheerful young man he'd talked to by radio link before the drop, he'd insisted on making that side of Jase exist in the apartment.

He'd done all Jase's side of the conversations in his head, was what he'd done. He'd made up all sorts of answerless answers Jase
might
give, if Jase had the vocabulary, if he had time to sit and talk at depth. Naturally Jase was under stress: language learning did that to a mind. Or maybe — or maybe Jase had been doing the same, filling in between the lines to suit
his
initial impression; and when those expectations didn't match reality, he felt betrayed.

"Jase," he said.

"What?"

"Where
was
the ship?"

"I told you. A star. A number on a chart."

"You know the feeling you had we weren't going fishing?"

"Yes?"

"It's what I feel when you tell me that."

Silence followed. It wasn't a happy silence. He wished at leisure he hadn't come at Jase with that.

He wished a miracle would happen and Jase would come out of his sulk and be the person he'd thought he was getting, the person who'd help him, not pose him problems; the person who'd stand by him with reason when the going got tough.

But Barb had done that until she'd had enough. She'd run to marry Paul Saarinson. Maybe Jase didn't want a career of keeping the paidhi mentally together, considering they had to share an apartment.

Maybe in meeting him, the astonishing thought came to him, Jase hadn't found the man
he'd
thought he was dealing with, either. The breakdown of trust might be rooted more deeply than any dispute over truthfulness, in failings of his own. He managed so
well
with atevi. His personal life —

Ask Barb how he got along. Ask Barb how easy it was to deal with him.

He remembered Wilson-paidhi. He remembered saying to himself he wouldn't ever get to that state. The bet had been among University students in the program that Wilson couldn't smile. That Wilson
couldn't
react. Grim man. Unresponsive as hell.

But at the same time those of them going for the single Field Service slot learned to contain what they felt. You learned not to show it. You
studied
being unreadable.

Barb had complained of it. Barb used to say — he could remember her face across that candlelit table — You're not on the mainland, Bren. It's
me
, Bren.

It gave him a queasy feeling to realize, well, maybe —
maybe
it had something to do with the falling away and the anger of humans he dealt with. But he'd told Jase. He'd tried to teach Jase to do it. Jase should realize why he didn't show expression.

Shouldn't
he realize it?

Move that into the category of fishing trips.

Fact was, he'd told Jase
not
to show emotion with atevi, and when Banichi and Jago walked in, he'd been laughing and lively and all those things he'd taught Jase not to be.

Maybe they should have thought a little less about language early on, and more about communication. Maybe they should have learned first what they expected of each other instead of each resigning himself to what he'd gotten.

"You and I," he said in Mosphei', "you and I need to talk, Jase. We need it very badly."

"We were going to do that out here."

"I'm
sorry. I
didn't remotely know what I was getting you into. I knew it was a chancy time. It's
always
a chancy time, especially when the pressure mounts up and you want to get away. I knew present company was the chanciest thing on the planet but the people who can
do
anything always are. It's the way it works, Jase."

"I trust you," Jase said in a curiously fragile tone — had to say it loudly, with all the thump and creak of the mechieti. "I do
trust
you, Bren. I'm trying like hell to."

"I'll get you back in one piece," he said. "I swear I will."

"That isn't what I'm worried about."

"What is?" he asked, thinking he'd finally gotten one thread that might pull up a clue to Jase's thinking.

But Jase didn't answer that.

And in the next moment he saw Cenedi rein back while Babs kept going. Something was going on. He thought Cenedi had done that to talk to Banichi.

But he was the target. Cenedi fell all the way back to him and Jase.

"Bren-paidhi," Cenedi said, as Bren restrained Nokhada from a nip at her rival. "The dowager asks why you avoid her. She told me to say exactly that, and to say that Nokhada still knows her way, nadi, if you've forgotten."

«
^
»

N
okhada indeed knew
the way, and with a little lax-ness on his part thought she was being sly about moving forward. Had he touched her with the crop, he'd have been there at the expense of every mechieta in front of her.

As it was, Nokhada announced to the mechieti in her path she was coming through with small butts of her head, a little push with the rooting-tusks against an obstinate flank. Mechieti hide was fortunately thick, and tails lashed and heads tossed, but no blood resulted, just ruffling of well-groomed hair.

Cenedi had lagged back. Nokhada achieved the position she wanted, next to Babsidi, and became quite tractable.

"Ah, well," Ilisidi said, sitting with that easy, graceful seat. She deigned a sidelong glance. "One can only imagine."

One didn't dare say a thing.

"Oh, come, come, nand' paidhi.
Are
we like humans? Or are humans like us? Is it — how am I to put it delicately — technically feasible?"

"One is certain we are not the first pair to have made the —" That led, in Ragi, to a difficult grammatical pass. He was sure he blushed. "To try."

"Was it pleasant?" she asked, delighting, damn her, to ask.

"Yes, nand' dowager." He wouldn't retreat, and met her sidelong glance with a pleasant smile.

Her grin could blind the sun. And vanished, in pursed lips. "Now that the world knows the paidhi has such interests, there'll be
such
gossip. My neighbor who loves to spy on my balcony will be absolutely
convinced
of scandal in our little breakfasts, now. We must do it again."

"I would be delighted, aiji-ma." He had no need to feign relief to have her take it well. "I treasure those hours you give to me."

"Oh, not that I have any scarcity of hours! I languish in disuse. My hours are such a little gift."

"Your hours and your good sense are my rescue, aiji-ma, and so I trespass egregiously on them, but never, never wish to impose."

"Languishing, I say. And now, now you drop young men from the heavens and expect
me
to civilize them. — Did I detect strife, nand' paidhi? Do I find discord?"

"He doesn't expect fish at this altitude."

Ilisidi laughed and laughed.

"Ah, paidhi-ji, a fish is what we hope for. A great gape-mouthed fish of a Kadigidi, which thinks to wreck us. I wanted you with
me
, Bren-ji. I
like
the numbers we've worked with this far; and I
never
tempt an Atageini beyond his virtue."

He was shocked. Outright shocked. Banichi and Jago had ridden up on his right and he wondered if
they
had accounted how great a temptation the paidhiin posed inside an Atageini perimeter, with the dice in motion, the demons of chance and fortune given their moment to overthrow the order of the world.

Baji-naji. The latticework of the universe, that allowed movement in the design.

Tabini was sleeping with the Atageini: Tatiseigi had made his move to get into the apartment to get at
them
, for good or ill or just to make up his mind, and Ilisidi had moved in. Ilisidi had possessed herself of the greatest temptation that might tip the Atageini toward a power-grab of their own, just flicked temptation out of Tatiseigi's reach at the very moment it might prove critical to his choice of direction in these few dangerous days.

Believe that Tabini didn't see it? Possible. Remotely possible.

But
if
Tabini should miscalculate, if he should wake up stabbed by an Atageini bride, the Atageini and the Kadigidi alike had to reckon that getting rid of Tabini didn't kill Ilisidi.

And
twice
the Padi Valley nobles had politicked to keep Ilisidi from being aiji.

Dare Tatiseigi move on Tabini now, or move on Ilisidi, who had the paidhiin in the middle of an action that could put them all, if it failed, in Kadigidi hands?

Tabini's rule was a two-headed beast. He saw that now with crystal clarity.

Bane of my life, Tabini called Ilisidi.

And Tabini had resorted to her in what seemed reckless action when he knew he had to contemplate war with Mospheira.

She hadn't gone home since.

"Any news?" she asked Cenedi now.

"Quiet still, aiji-ma."