Inheritor (52 page)

Deana, however, could wait for a moment. For a moment he was on a search for things
not
necessarily on government matters, things personal to him, which, if he could find while doing his job —

He was aware of Jase leaning on the counter, reading over his shoulder.

He was aware of his hand trembling as he turned the pages back and on a deep intake of breath he discovered the fear he'd not
let
surface since he'd failed to get through on the phones was still very much alive.

More of Deana's junk. It made up the bulk of the stack and it made him mad. He wanted his own messages. He wanted answers from Toby, what had happened, how his family fared.

He found it.

It said,
Bren, mother's out of surgery. They said it was worse than they thought. But she's going to be all right. I tried to call. The lines went down. I hope
…

The line blurred and he blinked it clear.

…
hope you get this. I hope you're all right. I was sorry we were cut off. I shouldn't have said the things I did, and I knew it, and all that other crap came out. I wanted to say I love you, brother. And I said that nonsense
.

His hand shook uncontrollably. He couldn't see. He couldn't think for a moment, except that it wasn't allowable for him to show disturbance in front of a roomful of atevi, in the service of the dowager. Too much was at issue. He had too much to do. He shoved his way out of the seat, told himself a restroom might give him a moment to get himself together without anyone being the wiser if he just moved slowly and showed no distress.
Lives
rode on his composure. He couldn't become the subject of gossip or disgrace to the dowager.

"Jago-ji," he said. His eyes were brimming and he tried not to blink. "It's a little warm. Where's a restroom, please?"

"Nandi." Jago moved past Jase and, thank God, between him and the rest of the room. "This way."

"Bren?" Jase asked him.

"Stay there!" he said to Jase, and found he could talk, and if he could get privacy enough to clear his eyes without making a fool of himself, he'd be fine and back before anyone questioned his reactions.

Jago, meanwhile, brought him to the side hall, and to a restroom door, and inside, all the while one could have heard a pin drop outside.

"Bren-ji?"

"It's all right." There was a wall basin, and he ran cold water and splashed it into his face. Jago handed him a towel. Atevi restrooms had no mirrors. He trusted he hadn't soaked his hair. He'd gotten his eyes clear but his gut was still in a knot. "Jago-ji, I'm sorry. I'm fine. How do I look?"

"Ill," Jago said. "What did you read, Bren-ji?"

He tried to frame an answer.
Good news
seemed a little extravagant. He truly wasn't doing well.

The door cracked. Jago held it with her hand, protective of him. Jase said, "Bren?"

"In a moment, Jase." Adrenaline surged up, annoyance, anger, he didn't know what. But Jase persisted.

"I have to talk to him, nand' Jago.
Please
."

"Let him in, nadi-ji," Bren said, thinking by the tone of Jase's voice he might have found something urgent in the record. Jago let the door open and Jase slipped in, while he knew the room outside would be concluding something was direly wrong.

"I need to talk to you," Jase said. "I read the message. I need to talk to you. Alone."

He didn't understand. He damned sure didn't want to discuss his personal life. He had a great deal else weighing on him.

But part of that great deal else was Jase's cooperation.

"Jago," he said.

"I will not leave you, Bren-ji."

Nor should. Jago took herself to the side, however, and back a pace to the wall.

That left Jase as alone as he could manage in a tiny space; and Jase ducked his head and took a breath in the manner of a man with an unpleasant task in front of him. "Bren," Jase said in a low voice, and went on in his own language, "Yolanda's trying to get away. She's coming here. She's going to try."

That took several heartbeats to listen to. And a few more to try to figure. Yolanda Mercheson, Jase's partner from the ship, was going to
leave
Mospheira?

"Why?" was the only thing he could say, not When? Not How? which were backed up and waiting, but at that point, Cenedi opened the door.

"Nandiin. Is there a problem?"

"We're all right," Bren said. His nerves were still wound tight, and he realized that the dowager was being kept waiting. "A moment, Cenedi-ji. Please excuse me to the dowager for just a moment." One didn't
do
such a thing; but he did. "Jase. Why? What's going on?"

"I don't know the details. I just know she's coming here. It's her judgment she can't work with the island."

Giving up on Mospheira? The ship was writing off the human population.

"I don't understand," he said. "And we're going to have to explain this to the dowager. When is she doing
*
this?" Jase's sudden passion for the seashore began to

»j nag at the back of a mind grown suspicious, over the years, of every anomaly. "Where did you make contact? When?"

"On the phone," Jase said in a faint voice; and Jase was white-faced and sweating. "We had it arranged before we came down, that if one of us found the place we were in impossible, if demands were being put on us that we couldn't accept, we'd cross the water somehow. And she — called me on the phone and that was how I knew. I knew I had to come at least to the coast. And then if she made it I was bound to find out about it if I was with you, so I could get her — get her to the capital. But I didn't know it was so big out here. I didn't know it —"

"Jase, that story's got so many holes in it —"

"I'm not lying."

"You were just going to flit over to the coast and pick her up — on
what? A
boat? A plane? Or is she going to hike over?" He was too shaken right now to be reasonable. Temper was very close to the surface. "How did you know? And don't tell me you made a f?

phone call I don't know about. Anything that came into the apartment I
do
know about, unless it walked in on two legs."

"No. It didn't. We had it arranged, Bren, we
didn't
know what we were putting ourselves into, and we knew there was a potential for problems with the atevi side; we knew there was a potential for problems on the island, too, but we really thought if things broke down they'd break down here, not there. So we said — if we had to signal trouble — one of us would say — would say there was a family emergency. We figured it was the one thing even atevi might understand and let one of us reach the other. And whoever — whoever had to run for it, it was going to be the other one who had somebody get sick. Or die, if it was a life and death situation. She said my father
died
, Bren. She's in real trouble."

He
might
have let expression to his face. He wasn't entirely sure. He was angry. He was embarrassed, and angry, and had a clear idea Jago followed most of it. He'd been through the entire government with Jase's lie. He'd intervened in an already touchy situation with a Guild half of whose local members had fled the site they were standing in.

"I didn't know the atevi," Jase said. "I didn't understand the way things are set up here. I didn't know you had
real
problems yourself, and then I did know and I didn't know how I was going to make it work and get her to the mainland when you had far worse troubles than I could claim to and you weren't getting your family out. I knew it wasn't going to work the way we'd planned, and I felt like hell about your situation, and I didn't know what to do except get over here somehow and get to the shore and know if she made it I'd be here —"

"You know," Bren said, with far better control of his voice than he thought he'd have, "you know I could take about any of it, piece at a time. I could understand your lying to me. I could accept you had to. But you took after
me
about lying, Jase. You went all high and holy about
my
lying, and you wanted
me
to apologize to you, when you damned well knew it was the other way around, Jase, that's what I can't understand."

"I didn't know I could believe you!"

"And now you can."

"Now I
do
," Jase said.

"Wasn't the plan that we'd
send
for her? Or was this something else, Jase? Are we hearing one more story?"

"I didn't want to call for her to come over here into something worse than she was in. And I didn't dare give her a come-ahead. I was with strange security. I couldn't get you
for four days
, Bren. I couldn't ask the staff. You said be careful with them. By then it was too late. My call to my mother — the ship hadn't heard from Yolanda. Not in four days. And I didn't know what to do."

"So you want to come out here. And it's not what you expected. And
now
you trust me."

"Everything you've told me," Jase began, but now
his
voice was shaking. "Everything so far makes sense. I believe Yolanda's leaving the island is tied to what Deana Hanks is doing, it's tied to everything you've told me. I've been trying all the way out here to find a way to tell you what was going on, but every time I tried I ran into something
else
that wasn't what you'd led me to think. I didn't know but what Yolanda was leaving the island
with
Hanks. But I don't think so, now. By everything I've heard, I don't think so. These people outside don't make me think so. The business in the apartment didn't make me think so. The dowager doesn't. But I just haven't known what to do, Bren. I tried to find out the truth — and at the first you were lying to me, and you work for the Mospheiran government,
and
for the aiji, and I didn't know where you stood, and everything was coming apart."

That made sense. The fishing trip. The damned fishing trip. Every lie they'd told each other, every difference of perceptions two hundred years of separation made in two sets of humans.

And if Yolanda Mercheson was pulling out of Mospheira, there were going to be some angry and desperate people on the island, who were only going to make matters more tense and more desperate for all of them remotely involved.

Forces on various sides of atevi concerns were moving on the mainland. Everything that had been going forward was still in motion and now human troubles were linked into it.

"You and I had better level with the dowager, is what we'd better do," Bren said. "There are operations going on all over the coast. It may be a hostile reaction Hanks
means
to stir up, if your partner's given away her intentions. If she and Hanks have had a falling-out, it could be
why
Hanks is doing what she's doing in the first place, trying to start a war here so the ship won't deal with us. Or it may be as simple and stupid as I think it is: she doesn't know what in hell she's messing with. Years in the program and a week being
with
atevi and she still doesn't figure it. — Jago-ji, nadi." He changed languages, and went for the door, concerned at the time slipping away from them. "How would Yolanda come, Jasi-ji? By boat? By plane?"

"She can't fly. That's certain. She
could
steal a boat. But the storm —"

"Handling a boat's no given, either. Stay with me." He walked into the communications center, walked past concerned technicians and the boy and the dowager's security to speak to Ilisidi herself. "Nand' dowager," he said, "my partner says that the other ship-paidhi has quit her post."

"Quit."

"And is leaving the island and coming to the mainland for refuge. Likeliest by boat. We don't know when. We don't know where."

"And
that
is in these messages you read?"

"No, nand' dowager," Jase said for himself. "I knew by a phone call days ago. Nand' Bren had
no
knowledge of it. I wished finally —" Jase's voice was trembling, and steadied. "I wished to tell it before now. I apologize, nand' dowager."

"It was a code by conversation," Bren interjected, "aiji-ma. Security couldn't possibly detect it. I didn't."

"Well," Ilisidi said, and while a foul temper was possible, when it was entirely justified, in fact, it didn't happen, though nerves all around were drawn tight. "Well." Ilisidi stood leaning on her cane. "And in this night of human secrets, in this night with serious consequences on every hand and fools attempting to overthrow all established order, what will happen on the island, nand' paidhi? What
has
happened? Disasters? Or better news."

Bren found his hands trembling again. He didn't want to go into the business with his family and he was sure someone on Ilisidi's staff had read the message by now, since it had sent Jase rushing after him, and had stalled everyone until he could sort matters out in the restroom.

"I'm sure that they'll try to stop her, nand' dowager." He had one resource left, one thing Shawn had given him, and as best he could figure it was time to try it.

It was a connection into the international phone system he'd done everything to avoid making: the National Security people had had their hands on his computer during his last visit, and
something
had happened when he'd stopped on his way to the airport to update his files: a huge amount of information had flooded into his computer storage, data and programs he'd downloaded onto removable storage once he'd realized it. And the Foreign Secretary having gone so far as to slip the codes he had under his cast to get them onto the mainland with him, he figured that Shawn intended them for a dire emergency and not just a phone-home-soon, Bren.

He also figured that by the time he'd found the note, far later than Shawn had intended, things were vastly changed and the people in the State Department and in the Defense Department who were in charge of such things had probably put something lethal on that access, something that would render his computer worse than useless.

He'd no facilities or knowledge to figure out such destructive actions. He'd not dare connect it in again to any computer system for fear of what he might bring with it. He just hoped the contact he was trying wouldn't destroy the computer's unconnected usefulness to him, in his translations and the other things he used it for, right down to his personal notes.