Foreigner: (10th Anniversary Edition) (11 page)

“Highly foolish.”

“We have different laws. And on Mospheira an ateva stands out. Find me the assassin in this crowd.”

“You don’t even know it was one of us.”

“Then it was the broadest damn human I ever saw. —Forgive me.” One didn’t swear, if one was the paidhi-aiji, not, at least, in the public hall. “It wasn’t a human. I know that.”

“You know who came to your room. You don’t know, however, who might have hired him. There is some smuggling on Mospheira, as the paidhi is aware. Connections we don’t know exist are a very dangerous possibility.”

The language had common pronouns that didn’t specify gender. Him or her, that meant. And politicians and the aiji’s staff used that pronoun habitually.

“I know where I’m safer.”

“Tabini needs you here.”

“For
what?
” That the aiji was undertaking anything but routine business was news to him. He hadn’t heard. Banichi was telling him something no one else had.

And a handful of weeks ago Tabini had found unprecedented whimsy in arming him and giving him two hours of personal instruction at his personal retreat. They had joked, and shot melons on poles, and had supper together, and Tabini had had all the time he could possibly want to warn him if something was coming up besides the routine councils and committee meetings that involved the paidhi.

They turned the corner. Banichi, he did not fail to note, hadn’t noticed his question. They walked out onto the colonnade, with the walls of the ancient Bu-javid pale and regular beyond them, the traffic flow on the steps reversed, now, downward bound. Atevi who had filed for hearing had their numbers, and the aiji would receive them in their established order.

But when they walked into the untrafficked hall that led toward the garden apartments, Banichi gave him two keys. “These are the only valid ones,” Banichi said. “Kindly don’t mix them up with your old ones. The old ones work. They just don’t turn off the wires.”

He gave Banichi a disturbed stare—which, also, Banichi didn’t seem to notice. “Can’t you just shock the bastard? Scare him? He’s not a professional. There’s been no notice. …”

“I’m within my license,” Banichi said. “The Intent is filed. Didn’t you say so? The intruder would be very foolish to try again.”

A queasy feeling was in his stomach. “Banichi, damn it. …”

“I’ve advised the servants. Honest and wise servants, capable of serving in this house, will request admission henceforth. Your apartment is no different than mine, now. Or Jago’s. I change my own sheets.”

As well as he knew Jago and Banichi, he had had no idea of such hazards in their quarters. It made sense in their case or in Tabini’s. It didn’t, in his.

“I trust,” Banichi said, “you’ve no duplicate keys circulating. No ladies. No—hem—other connections. You’ve not been gambling, have you?”

“No!” Banichi knew him, too, knew he had female connections on Mospheira, one and two not averse to what Banichi would call a one-candle night. The paidhi-aiji hadn’t time for a social life, otherwise. Or for long romantic maneuverings or hurt feelings, lingering hellos or good-byes—most of all, not for the peddling of influence or attempts to push this or that point on him. His friends
didn’t ask questions. Or want more than a bouquet of flowers, a phone call, and a night at the theater.

“Just mind, if you’ve given any keys away.”

“I’m not such a fool.”

“Fools of that kind abound in the Bu-javid. I’ve spoken severely to the aiji.”

Give atevi a piece of tech and sometimes they put it together in ways humans hadn’t, in their own history—inventors, out of their own social framework, connected ideas in ways you didn’t expect, and never intended, either in social consequence, or in technical ramifications. The wire was one. Figure that atevi had a propensity for inventions regarding personal protection, figure that atevi law didn’t forbid lethal devices, and ask how far they’d taken other items and to what uses they didn’t advertise.

The paidhi tried to keep ahead of it. The paidhi tried to keep abreast of every technology and every piece of vocabulary in the known universe, but bits and tags perpetually got away and it was accelerating—the escape of knowledge, the recombination of items into things utterly out of human control.

Most of all, atevi weren’t incapable of making technological discoveries completely on their own … and had no trouble keeping them prudently under wraps. They were not a communicative people.

They reached the door. He used the key Banichi had given him. The door opened. Neither the mat nor the wire was in evidence.

“Ankle high and black,” Banichi said. “But it’s down and disarmed. You did use the right key.”

“
Your
key.” He didn’t favor Banichi’s jokes. “I don’t see the mat.”

“Under the carpet.
Don’t
walk on it barefoot. You’d bleed. The wire is an easy step in. You can walk on it while it’s off. Just don’t do that barefoot, either.”

He could scarcely see it. He walked across the mat. Banichi stayed the other side of it.

“It cuts its own way through insulation,” Banichi said.
“And through boot leather, paidhi-ji, if it’s live. Don’t touch it, even when it’s dead. Lock the door and don’t wander the halls.”

“I have an energy council meeting this afternoon.”

“You’ll want to change coats, nadi. Wait here for Jago. She’ll escort you.”

“What is this? I’m to have an escort everywhere I go? I’m to be leapt upon by the minister of Works? Assaulted by the head of Water Management?”

“Prudence, prudence, nadi Bren. Jago’s witty company. She’s fascinated by your brown hair.”

He was outraged. “You’re enjoying this. It’s not funny, Banichi.”

“Forgive me.” Banichi was unfailingly solemn. “But humor her. Escort is so damned boring.”

I
t was the old argument, highway transport versus rail, bringing intense lobbying pressure from the highway transport operators, who wanted road expansion into the hill towns, versus the rail industry, who wanted the high-speed research money and the eventual extensions into the highlands. Versus commercial air freight, and versus the general taxpayers who didn’t want their taxes raised. The provincial governor wanted a highway instead of a rail spur, and advanced arguments, putting considerable influence to bear on the minister of Works.

Computer at his elbow, the screen long since gone to rest, Bren listened through the argument he’d heard in various guises—this was a repainted, replastered version—and on a notepad on the table in front of him, sketched interlocked circles that might be psychologically significant.

Far more interesting a pastime than listening to the minister’s delivery. Jago was outside, probably enjoying a soft drink, while the paidhi-aiji was running out of ice water.

The Minister of Works had a numbing, sing-song rhythm in his voice. But the paidhi-aiji was obliged to listen, in case of action on the proposal. The paidhi-aiji had no vote, of course, if the highway came to a vote today at all, which didn’t look likely. He had no right even to speak uninvited, unless he decided to impose his one real power, his outright veto over a council recommendation to the upper house, the tashrid—a veto which was good until the tashrid met to consider it. He had used his veto twice in the research and development council, never with this minister of Works, although his predecessor had done it a record eighteen times on the never-completed Transmontane Highway, which was now, since the rail link, a moot point.

One hoped.

There was the whole of human history in the library on Mospheira, all the records of their predecessors, or all that they could still access—records which suggested, with the wisdom of hindsight, that consuming the planet’s petrochemicals in a vast orgy of private transport wasn’t the best long-range choice for the environment or the quality of life. The paidhi’s advice might go counter to local ambitions. In the case of the highway system, the advice had gone counter, indeed it had. But atevi had made enormous advances, and the air above the Bergid range still sparkled. The paidhi took a certain pride in that—in the name of nearly two hundred years of paidhiin before him.

The atevi hadn’t quite mastered steam when humans had arrived on their planet uninvited and unwilling.

Atevi had seen the tech, atevi had been, like humans, eager for profit and progress—but unlike humans, they tended to see profit much more in terms of power accruing to their interlocked relationships. It was something
about their hardwiring, human theorists said; since the inclination seemed to transcend cultural lines; a scholarly speculation useful for the theorists sitting safe on Mospheira, not for the paidhi-aiji, who had to make practical sense to the aiji of the Ragi atevi in the city of Shejidan, in Mospheira’s nearest neighboring Association and long-term ally—

Without which, there might be a second ugly test of human technology versus atevi
haroniin
, a concept for which there was no human word or even complete translation. Say that atevi patience had its limits, that assassination was essential to the way atevi kept their social balance, and
haroniin
meant something like ‘accumulated stresses on the system, justifying adjustment.’ Like all the other approximations: aiji wasn’t quite ‘duke,’ it certainly wasn’t ‘king,’ and the atevi concept of countries, borders and boundaries of authority had things in common with their concept of flight plans.

No, it wasn’t a good idea to develop highways and independent transport, decentralizing what was an effective tax-supported system of public works, which supported the various aijiin throughout the continent in their offices, which in turn supported Tabini-aiji and the system at Shejidan.

No, it wasn’t a good idea to encourage systems in which entrepreneurs might start making a lot of money, spreading other entrepreneurial settlement along roadways and forming human-style corporations.

Not in a system where assassination was an ordinary and legal social adjustment.

Damn, it was disturbing, that attempt on his apartment, more so the more time distanced him from the physical fear. In the convolutions of thinking one necessarily was drawn into,
being
the paidhi—studying and competing for years to be the paidhi, and becoming, in sum, fluent in a language in which human words and human thought didn’t neatly translate … bits and pieces of connections had started bobbing to the surface of the very dark waters
of atevi mentality as he understood it. Bits and pieces had been doing that since last night, just random bits of worrisome thought drifting up out of that interface between atevi ideas and human ones.

Worrisome thoughts that said that attacking the paidhi-aiji, the supposedly inoffensive, neutral and discreetly silent paidhi-aiji … was, if not a product of lunacy, a premeditated attack on some sort of system, meaning any point of what
was
.

He tried to make himself the most apolitical, quiet presence in Tabini’s court. He pursued
no
contact with the political process except sitting silently in court or in the corner of some technological or sociological impact council—and occasionally, very occasionally presenting a paper. Having public attention called to him as Tabini had just done … was contrary to all the established policy of his office.

He wished Tabini hadn’t made his filing of Intent—but clearly Tabini had had to do something severe about the invasion of the Bu-javid, most particularly the employer of the assassin’s failure to file feud before doing it.

No matter that assassination was legal and accepted—you didn’t, in atevi terms, proceed without filing, you didn’t proceed without license, and you didn’t order wholesale bloodbaths. You removed the minimal individual that would solve a problem.
Biichi-gi
, the atevi called it. Humans translated it … ‘finesse.’

Finesse was certainly what the attempt lacked—give or take the would-be assassin hadn’t expected the paidhi to have a gun that humans weren’t supposed to have, this side of the Mospheira straits.

A gun that Tabini had given him very recently.

And Banichi and Jago insisted they couldn’t find a clue.

Damned disturbing.

Attack on some system? The paidhi-aiji might find himself identified as belonging to any number of systems … like being human, like being the paidhi-aiji at all, like
advising the aiji that the rail system was, for long-range ecological considerations, better than highway transport … but who ever absolutely knew the reason or the offense, but the party who’d decided to ‘finesse’ a matter?

The paidhi-aiji hadn’t historically been a target. Personally, his whole tenure had been the collection of words, the maintenance of the dictionary, the observation and reporting of social change. The advice he gave Tabini was far from solely
his
idea: everything he did and said came from hundreds of experts and advisers on Mospheira, telling him in detail what to say, what to offer, what to admit to—so finessing
him
out of the picture might send a certain message of displeasure with humans, but it would hardly hasten highways into existence.

Tabini had felt something in the wind, and armed him.

And he hadn’t reported that fact to Mospheira, second point to consider: Tabini had asked him not to tell anyone about the gun, he had always respected certain few private exchanges between himself and the aiji, and he had extended that discretion to keeping it out of his official reports. He’d worried about it, but Tabini’s confidences had flattered him, personally and professionally—there at the hunting lodge, in Taiben, where all kinds of court rules were suspended and everyone was on holiday. Marksmanship was an atevi sport, an atevi passion—and Tabini, a champion marksman with a pistol, had, apparently on whim, violated a specific Treaty provision to provide the paidhi, as had seemed then, a rare week of personal closeness with him, a rare gesture of—if not friendship, at least as close as atevi came, an abrogation of all the formalities that surrounded and constrained him and Tabini alike.