Foreigner: (10th Anniversary Edition) (25 page)

“But you try, Jago-ji. Banichi tries, too. It makes me less—” There
was
no word for lonely. “Less single.”

“We share a
man’chi,
” Jago said, as if she
had
understood something he was saying. “To Tabini’s house. Don’t doubt us, paidhi-ji. We won’t desert you.”

Off the meaning again. There was nothing there, nothing to make the leap of logic. He stared at her, asking himself how someone so fundamentally honest, and
kind
, granted the license she had—could be so absolutely void of what it might take to make that leap of emotional need. It just didn’t click into place. And it was a mistake to pin anything on the Adjaiwaio and any dead philosophy.

Philosophy was the keyword: intellectual, not emotional structure. And a human being, having embraced it, went away empty and in pain.

He said, “Thank you, nadi-ji,” and walked away from the fire to the window, which showed nothing but rain-spots against the dark.

Something banged, or popped. It echoed off the walls, once, twice.

That
was no loose shutter. It was off somewhere outside the walls, to the southwest, he thought, beyond the driveway.

The house seemed very still, except the rain and the sound of the fire on the hearth.

“Get away from the window,” Jago said, and he stepped
back immediately, his shoulder to solid stone, his heart beating like a hammer as he expected Jago to leave him and rush off to Banichi’s aid. His imagination leapt to four and five assassins breaching the antique defenses of the castle, enemies already inside the walls.

But Jago only stood listening, as it seemed. There was no second report. Her pocket-com beeped—he had not seen it on her person, but of course she had it; she lifted it and thumbed on to Banichi’s voice, speaking in verbal code.

“Tano shot at shadows,” she translated, glancing at him. She was a black shape against the fire. “It’s all right. He’s not licensed.”

Understandable that Tano would make a mistake in judgement, she meant. So Tano, at least, and probably Algini, was out of Tabini’s house guard—licensed for firearms, for defense, but not for their use in public places.

“So was it lightning?” he asked. “Is it lightning they’re shooting at out there?”

“Nervous fingers,” Jago said easily, and shut the com off. “Nothing at all to worry about, nadi-ji.”

“How long until we have power?”

“As soon as the crews can get up here from Maidingi. Morning, I’d say, before we have lights. This happens, nadi. The cannon on the wall draw strikes very frequently. So, unfortunately, does the transformer. It’s not at all uncommon.”

Breakfast might be cancelled, due to the power failure. He might have a reprieve from his folly.

“I suggest you go to bed,” Jago said. “I’ll sit here and read until the rest of us come in. You’ve an appointment in the morning.”

“We were discussing
man’chi
,” he said, unnerved, be it the storm or the shot or his own failures. He’d gotten far too personal with Jago, right down to her assumption he was trying to approach her for sex, God help him. He was tangling every line of communication he had, he was on
an emotional jag, he felt entirely uneasy about the impression he’d left with her, an impression she was doubtless going to convey to Banichi, and both of them to Tabini: the paidhi’s behaving very oddly, they’d say. He propositioned Jago, invited Djinana to the moon, and thinks Banichi’s a dessert.

“Were we?” Jago left the fire and walked over to him, taking his arm. “Let’s walk back to your bedroom, nand’ paidhi, you’ll take a chill—” She outright snatched him past the window, bruising his arm, he so little expected it.

He walked with her, then, telling himself if she were really concerned she’d have made him crawl beneath it—she only wanted him away from a window that would glow with conspicuous light from the fire, and cast their shadows. There were the outer walls, between that window and the lake.

But was it lightning hitting the cannon that she feared?

“Go to bed,” Jago said, delivering him to the door of his bedroom. “Bren-ji. Don’t worry. They’ll be assessing damage. We’ll need to call down to the power station with the information. And of course we take special precautions when we do lose power. It’s only routine. You may hear me go out. You may not. Don’t worry for your safety.”

So one
could
call the airport on the security radio. One would have thought so. But it was the first he’d heard anyone admit it. And having security trekking through his room all night didn’t promise a good night’s sleep.

But he sat down on the bed and Jago walked back to the other room, leaving him in the almost dark. He took off his robe, put himself beneath the skins, and lay listening, watching the faint light from the fireplace in the other room make moving shadows on the walls and glisten on the glass eyes of the beast opposite his bed.

They say it’s perfectly safe, he thought at it. Don’t worry.

It made a sort of sense to talk to it, the two of them in such intimate relationship. It was a creature of this planet.
It had died mad, fighting atevi who’d enjoyed killing it. Nobody needed to feel sorry for anybody. It wasn’t the last of its species. There were probably hundreds of thousands of its kind out there in the underbrush as mad and pitiless as it was.

Adapted for this earth. It didn’t make attachments to its young or its associates. It didn’t need them. Nature fitted it with a hierarchical sense of dominance, survival positive, proof against heartbreak.

It survived until something meaner killed it and stuck its head on a wall, for company to a foolish human, who’d let himself in for this—who’d chased after the knowledge and then the honor of being the best.

Which had to be enough to go to bed with on nights like this. Because there damned sure wasn’t anything else, and if he let himself—

But he couldn’t. The paidhi couldn’t start, at twenty-six atevi years of age, to humanize the people he dealt with. It was the worst trap. All his predecessors had battled it. He knew it in theory.

He’d been doing all right while he was an hour’s flight away from Mospheira. While his mail arrived on schedule, twice a week. While …

While he’d believed beyond a doubt he was going to see human faces again, and while things were going outstandingly well, and while Tabini and he were such, such good friends.

Key that word, Friend.

The paidhi had been in a damned lot of trouble, right there. The paidhi had been stone blind, right there.

The paidhi didn’t know why he was here, the paidhi didn’t know how he was going to get back again, the paidhi couldn’t
get
the emotional satisfaction out of Banichi and Jago that Tabini had been feeding him, laughing with him, joking with him, down to the last time they’d met.

Blowing melons to bits. Tabini patting him on the back—gently, because human backs fractured so easily—and
telling him he had real talent for firearms. How good was
Tabini
, more to the point? How good at reading the paidhi was the atevi fourth in line of
his
side of the bargain?

Tipped off, perhaps, by
his
predecessor, that the paidhiin had a soft spot for personal attachments?

That the longer you knew them, the greater fools they became, and the more trusting, and the easier to get things from?

There was a painful lump in his throat, a painful, human knot interfering with his rational assessment of the situation. He’d questioned, occasionally, how long he was good for, whether he
could
adjust. Not every paidhi made it the lifelong commitment they’d signed on for, the pool of available advice had dried up—Wilson hadn’t been a damned bit of help, just gotten strange and so short-fused the board had talked about replacing him against Tabini’s father’s expressed refusal to have him replaced. Wilson had had his third heart attack the first month he was back on Mospheira, maintained a grim, passionless demeanor in every meeting the two of them had had, never told him a damned thing of any use.

The board called it burn-out. He’d taken their word for it and tried not to think of Wilson as a son of a bitch. He’d
met
Tabini on his few fill-ins for Wilson’s absences, a few days at a time, the two last years of Valasi’s administration—he’d thought Tabini’s predecessor Valasi a real match for Wilson’s glum mood, but he’d
liked
Tabini—that dangerous word again—but, point of fact, he’d never personally believed in Wilson’s bum-out. A man didn’t get that strange, that unpleasant, without his own character contributing to it. He’d not
liked
Wilson, and when he’d asked Wilson what his impression was of Tabini, Wilson had said, in a surly tone, “The same as the rest of them.”

He’d not
liked
Wilson. He
had
liked Tabini. He’d thought it a mistake on the board’s part to have ever let
Wilson take office, a man with that kind of prejudice, that kind of attitude.

He was scared tonight. He looked down the years he might stay in office and the years he might waste in the foolishness he called friendship with Tabini, and saw himself in Wilson’s place, never having had a wife, never having had a child, never having had a friend past the day Barb would find some man on Mospheira a better investment: life was too short to stay at the beck and call of some guy dropping into her life with no explanations, no conversation about his job—a face that began to go dead as if the nerves of expression were cut.

He could resign. He could go home. He could ask Barb to marry him.

But he had no guarantee Barb
wanted
to marry him. No questions, no commitment, no unloading of problems, a fairy-tale weekend of fancy restaurants and luxury hotels … he didn’t know what Barb really thought, he didn’t know what Barb really wanted, he didn’t
know
her in any way but the terms they’d met on, the terms they still had. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even close friendship. When he tried to think of the people he’d called friends before he went into university … he didn’t know where they were now, if they’d left the town, or if they’d stayed.

He hadn’t been able to turn the situation over to Deana Hanks for a week. Where did he think he was going to find it in him to turn the whole job over to her and walk out—irrevocably, walk out on what he’d prepared his whole life to do?

Like Wilson—a man seventy years old, who’d just seen Valasi assassinated, who’d just come home, because his career ended with Valasi—with nothing to show for forty-three years of work but the dictionary entries he’d made, a handful of scholarly articles, and a record number of vetoes on the Transmontane Highway Project. No wife, no family. Nothing but the university teaching post waiting for him, and he couldn’t communicate with the students.

Wilson
couldn’t communicate with the human students.

He was going to write a paper when he got out of this, however damning it was, a paper about Wilson, and the atevi interface, and the talk he’d had with Jago, and
why
Wilson, with that face, with that demeanor, with that attitude, couldn’t communicate with his classes.

Thunder crashed, outside his wall. He jumped, and lay there with his heart doing double beats and his ears still ringing.

The cannon, Jago said. Common occurrence.

He lay there and shook, whether because of the noise, or the craziness of the night. Or because he couldn’t understand any longer why he was here, or why a Bu-javid guard like Tano drew a gun and fired, when they were out there looking at transformers.

Looking at lightning-struck transformers, while the lightning played over their heads and the rain fell on them.

Like hell, he thought, like hell, Jago. Shooting at shadows. What
shadows
, Jago, is Tano expecting out there in the rain?

Shadows that fly in on scheduled airliners … and the tightest security on the planet, except ours, doesn’t know who it is and where they are?

Like hell
again
, Jago.

“A
lively night,” the aiji-dowager said, over tea she swore was safe. “Did you sleep, nand’ paidhi?” “Intermittently.”

Ilisidi chuckled softly, and pointed out the flight of a dragonette above the misty, chill lake. The balcony railing dripped with recent rain. The sun came up gold above the mountains across the lake, and the mist began to glow
with it. The dragonette dived down the face of the cliff, membranous wings spread against the sun, and swept upward again, with something in its claws.

Predator and prey.

“They’re pests,” Ilisidi said. “The mecheiti hate them, but I won’t have the nest destroyed. They were here first. What does the paidhi say?”

“The paidhi agrees with you.”

“What, that those that were here first—have natural ownership?”

Two sips of tea, one bite of roll, and Ilisidi was on the attack. Banichi had said be careful. Tabini had said he could handle it.

He thought a moment, first to agree, then to quibble. Then: “The paidhi agrees that the chain of life shouldn’t be broken. That the loss of that nest would impoverish Malguri.”

Ilisidi’s pale eyes rested on him, impassive as Banichi’s could ever be—she was annoyed, perhaps, at his changing the subject back again.

But he hadn’t changed her proposition, not entirely.

“They’re bandits,” Ilisidi said.

“Irreplaceable,” he said.

“Vermin.”

“The past needs the future. The future needs the past.”

“Vermin, I say, that I choose to preserve.”

“The paidhi agrees. What do you call them?”

“Wi’itkitiin. They make that sound.”

“Wi’itkitiin.” He watched another scaled and feathered diver, and asked himself if Earth had ever known the like. “Nothing else makes that sound.”

“No.”

“Reason enough to save it.”

Ilisidi’s mouth tightened. The grimace became a hint of a laugh, and she spooned up several bites of cereal, put away several thin slices of breakfast steak.

Bren kept pace, figuring one didn’t speak to the aiji-dowager when she was thinking, and an excellent breakfast
was going to get cold. Cooked over wood fire, Cenedi had said, when he wondered how there was anything hot, or cooked. He supposed they managed that in the kitchen fireplace, if there was a fireplace in the kitchen. The thumping Jago had called the generator had stopped sometime during the night. The machine was out of fuel, perhaps, or malfunctioning itself. Maidingi Power swore on their lives and reputations that Malguri would have power, as soon, they said, as they had restored power to the quarter of Maidingi township that was dark and chill this morning.