Invader (57 page)

There couldn't be an ateva in the whole world, once the news got beyond Taiben and once it hit the lake resort and the airport, who wouldn't phone a relative to say that humans were falling out of the sky again, and they were doing it here, at dawn tomorrow.

It wasn't a prescription for early sleep. Tano and Algini came in briefly to say they'd indeed contacted the rangers, who took the rail over to the lake and personally, on the loudspeakers, advised tourists that it was a dangerous area, that and that they risked the aiji's extreme displeasure.

"One wonders how many have already left," Bren said.

"The rangers are all advised," Algini said.

"But one couldn't tell tourists from Guild members looking for trouble."

"Many of us know each other," Tano said. "Especially in the central region."

"But true," Algini said, "that one has to approach closer than one would like to tell the difference. It's very clever, what they've done."

"Who's done? Does anybody know who's behind this?"

"There's a fairly long list, including neighboring estates."

"But the message. Was it the dowager's doing?"

"One doesn't know. If —"

"Nand' paidhi," a member of Tabini's staff was in the doorway. "A human is calling."

"I'm coming." He was instantly out of the chair, and with Tano and Algini who had come from that wing, which they'd devoted to operations, he followed the man to the nearest phone.

"This is Bren Cameron. Hello?"

"
Jase Graham. Got a real small window here. Closer we get
…" There was breakup. "
Everything on schedule
?"

"We're fine. How are you?"

"I
lost that. Where are you
?"

"Fifty kilometers from the landing site. I'll
be
there, do you hear?"

"We're… board the lander. Systems… can you…?"

"Repeat, please.

There was just static. Then: "
See you. You copy
?"

"Yes! I get that! I'll be there!"

The communication faded out in static, tantalizing in what he didn't know, reassuring in what he could hear.

And what could they say? Watch out for hikers? We hope nobody shoots at the lander?

"They're on schedule," he said. "When are we going out there?"

"One hasn't heard that you were going, nand' paidhi," Tano said.

That was a possibility he hadn't even considered. If he was at Taiben, he'd damn sure be at the landing in the morning. He wasn't leaving two humans to be scared out of their minds or to make some risky misassumption before they reached the lodge.

"Where's Tabini?" he asked. "I need to talk to him."

"Nand' paidhi," Algini said, "we'll make that request."

"No talking through relays. I want to talk to him."

He was being, perhaps, unreasonable. But if the tourist emergency had hauled Tabini off where he couldn't get to Tabini before they arranged details that left him out, he was damned mad,
and
surprised,
and
frustrated.

"Yes, nand' paidhi," Algini said, and a certain part of Taiben's whole communications diverted itself, probably not operationally wise, probably an obstruction of operations and possibly a dangerous betrayal of the fact Tabini wasn't under Taiben's roof at the moment.

"Don't make noise about it," he said. "Just — I need this straightened out. They could come down in need of medical help. They could need a translator. Or first aid. Which I can give — at least have a good guess. There's a chance of a rough landing. And I don't want a mistake."

"I'll find the aiji," Tano said.

"Thank you, nadi."

Which meant Tano hiking out through the dark himself.

He was sorry about it. But the reasons that came to him were real reasons.

Dammit.

So he went back to the central hall and paced and repositioned bric-a-brac, and waited, in general, until, short of breath, Tano came in with, "Paidhi-ma. Banichi confirms you're to be picked up with the rest, two hours before dawn."

"
Thank
you, Tano-ji," he said, and felt foolish, having had Tano run all over the estate, in the dark, but it eased his mind enough he at least lost his urge to pace the floor.

And after that, he decided it might be wise at least to go to bed, get what rest he could without sleeping — he refused to sleep, for fear something would happen and they
would
leave him behind — and be ready to go in the morning.

So he went down the hall into the guest wing, dismissed the servants who were determined to be of help, and began, alone, to lay out the clothes he wanted for what might end up being a hike.

But the jacket he regularly wore for hiking had the brilliant red stripe down the sleeve that warned hunters he wasn't a target — and he wasn't sure, counting the problems with the neighbors, that he wanted to be that conspicuous an object in the brush.

He laid down the plain brown one he was wearing, instead — leather, and comfortable for Taiben's hall, seeing that end-of-season evenings often turned cold, and human bones chilled faster than atevi's.

"Bren-ji? One heard you were questioning arrangements?"

Jago's voice. He turned, stood there with the jacket in his hands — Jago — was different to him. He wasn't seeing her the way he'd always seen her, not a hair different, not a hint of impropriety in her being here, or in her appearance, or his, but suddenly the room was too close, the air was too warm, and a human brain with too much to do was all of a sudden trying to think about details in the circuits left over from a very stupid whiteout in the fore-brain.

"I — uh, I wanted to know what time we were leaving. In the morning." The paidhi, the source of international communications, wasn't doing well. "Tano found my answer."

"There was a phone call?"

"I — uh, yes. There was."

"Bren-ji — is something wrong?"

"I — no. No. Everything's on schedule."

Jago stood there a moment. Then shut the door, shutting them both in.

He felt a sense of panic. And knew it showed. He wasn't about to throw Jago out. Or to request a good friend to leave.

Which
wasn't
what she was, dammit, he wasn't thinking.

"I've made you uneasy," Jago said. "Bren-paidhi, I was stupidly mistaken. I apologize. I most sincerely apologize."

He didn't know what to say. He stood there. And Jago said, with great correctness, "Excuse the intrusion, nand' paidhi," and turned quietly to go.

"I —" he said, in all the fluency he had. "Jago."

"Nand' paidhi?" She had her hand on the latch. He wanted and didn't want. He relied on Banichi and Jago for life and death. But Jago had touched off something — so tangled in his psyche he didn't know what to do with it, didn't know where to take hold of it, even what to call it.

"Jago —"

She was still waiting. He didn't know how many Fs he'd started with, but he knew it was far too many for anyone's patience.

"Nothing," he said desperately, "nothing could make me distrust you, in any way. You —" Breath was not coming easily. "You affected me very profoundly — that's all I know how to say. I'm not sure what you think. I'm not sure what I think. I
can't
think at the moment, there's just too much, too much going on. There will be for a while. — Do I make any sense at all? It's not you. It's me. I'm not — just not at my most stable, Jago."

He ran out of words. Jago didn't seem to find any immediately, and the silence went on, so deep he could all but hear his heart beat.

"Have I angered you?" Jago asked then.

"No." A vehement shake of his head. But it wasn't an atevi gesture. "In no way. Most emphatically not."

"Disturbed you?"

"Yes."

Jago bowed her head and seemed to take that for dismissal.

"Jago." He was floundering. Clinical was all he knew how to be, to save them both. "It's the
friend
business. It's that word. We say we
love
. Even when we need. When we need, it's something not very productive. It's a lot of human damn wiring, Jago-ji. Expectations. — Like
man'chi
. How do you stop it logically? — And I can't know — maybe you're just curious. Maybe just — nothing more than that. Maybe a lot more serious than that. I don't know."

"One meant well," Jago said, still with that unbreakable control. "Evidently one was very wrong."

"No. I just — Jago, God, I'm embarrassed as hell. I just want you back. The way things were. For a while. Just that — if that doesn't offend you."

"No," she said.

"No, it can't be the same? Or no, it doesn't offend you?"

"No, nand' paidhi. I am not offended. I find no possible way to be offended."

"Can I say — at least — I'm very attracted?"

She laughed, a jolt, a startlement. "You can say so," she said. "One takes no offense, paidhi-ji."

"Is it always No, from this point? Or maybe someday?"

"What does the paidhi think?"

The paidhi was shaky in the knees. It wasn't his habit. It wasn't his style, not with Barb, not with anybody else. He felt like a total fool. And stood there with the coat in his hands. 'The paidhi knows when he can't translate. When he hasn't got a hope of translating. The paidhi thinks he's extremely damn fortunate you're not mad at him."

A shy look he'd rarely seen from Jago. A nervous laugh he never had. "By no means. If you —"

But the damn pocket-corn went off at that very moment. Jago pulled it from her belt, held it to her ear, and frowned.

"Fourteen," she said, probably — he'd grown wiser in the ways security communicated — her station number, acknowledging hearing a message.

Then: "If you wish to change clothes," she said, "hurry. We're moving out. Now."

"To the landing site? To there? Or where?"

"We've just been asked to go to the front of the building at moderate speed. This isn't a run, but it doesn't leave you any time, nand' paidhi."

"Damn," he said, and unbuttoned his shirt without a second's further question, was pulling on his sweater when Jago left, which only put him in more hurry to switch trousers and change to heavier socks and heavier-soled boots. He exited the room, still struggling with his coat, to find Jago waiting for him.

"What is the hurry?'

"Perhaps," she said, "that someone is on the way here. That's a guess, nand' paidhi."

"I'll take your guesses over some people's information." He had gloves. He'd put them in the coat pocket. They reached the main hall and joined a small number of the house security moving out toward the doors. The Atigeini servants gathered in alarm and dismay.

"Not everyone is leaving," Banichi was telling them. "There's a shelter in the cellar. House permanent staff has the keys. Extinguish the fire, pull the fuses. That will shut down everything to emergency power. Go below in good order, wait for authorized signals to open the door. You'll be safe." Banichi fell in with them as they went out the open front doors, onto the porch — an open car came around the corner of the east wing, running lights on, no headlights, and Bren's heart jumped, but Banichi and

Jago didn't react to the appearance, just hustled him along the length of the porch.

Something heavy was shoved into his coat pocket on Banichi's side, jammed down — he put a hand over the weight to stabilize it, no second guess needed what it was, no guess why Banichi picked now to give it to him and had no time to waste in the paidhi's questions, just —

"Do we have a radio? Do we have communications? We need —"

"No difficulty," Banichi said and, atevi having better night-vision on the average, seized his arm, the weak one, and made sure his feet found the steps downward. The car had pulled up and security opened the door for him, atevi eyes glowing pale gold in the faint light, there, floating disembodied the other side of the car. He had qualms about getting in, he feared that they might send him off somewhere and they might stay behind in defense of Taiben, but that wasn't the indication about the situation. Jago got in ahead of him and Banichi took the seat beside the driver, one more climbed into the back and shut the door — that was Tano, he realized all of a sudden.

"Where's Algini?"

"The car behind, nand' paidhi. With the radio." The car took off with a spin of its tires, then lumbered over tree roots and took the downhill by a series of tilts and bounces — they were on what the estate charitably called the branch road, which had far more of branches than road about it. It went around trees rather than have one cut down, it relied on four-wheel drive and a good suspension, which the staff cars had — along with the bar along the back of the front seat that became a good idea as they veered with the road along the side of the lodge and down again, toward the junction of service roads which the staff used getting equipment to and from the various wells and stations — he knew this road, Tabini'd been easy on his slight-of-stature guest, in the first visit he'd made to Taiben.

Not afterward. Not now.

"What's happening?" he asked, clinging to the safety bar. "Where's Tabini?"

Maybe Tano and Jago didn't know. Banichi turned around, arm on the seat back, head down because of the branches that raked over the windshield. "Somebody leaked the event to the local news — we've got intruders in the woods and we can't tell who're tourists from the lake district and who's not, which is not a tolerable situation for security. We've very good reason to believe this release of information was not a prank."

"Meaning the same people who have Hanks are out there."

"Most likely they are." Banichi turned his head back to the short view of tree trunks and underlit branches as the car jolted its way into a turn.

The driver — probably a ranger — had his hands full: it wasn't every atevi who knew how to drive, and nobody could avoid collision who didn't know this road, not from where he sat — the wheel went this way and that, in furious efforts that exerted atevi strength to keep the wheels on track at all, bouncing over roots and jolting over low spots, the low running lights bouncing wildly, amber lights from a car behind them casting their shadows on the seat backs in front of them and reflecting in the windshield.