Foreigner: (10th Anniversary Edition) (28 page)

They rode in tall, windswept grass, and yellow, ragged flowers that abounded along the ridge, with an unobstructed view across the lake to the mountains on the other side. The breaths he drew were freighted with rich smells of the earth and the grass and crushed flowers, the oiled leather of the harness, and the dusty, musky smell of the mecheiti themselves. The grass and the pebbly rubble at the roots brought back vividly the last time he and Tabini had hunted at Taiben, slogging afoot through the dusty hills—

Tabini trying to show him the finer points of hunting and stalking—

Everything came back to him so very clearly: that day, that exact time, as if the realities of the countryside and the reality of the city compartmentalized themselves so thoroughly they maintained separate time-streams, so that, entering one … he took up where he had left off, with no events between. Time slipped wildly on him,
turned treacherous. Today’s foolish hazard had slid unawares to chancy, intoxicating success, the paidhi riding a thousand, two thousand miles from the safety of Mospheira and enjoying the sights and smells and sounds no human had ever experienced. The mecheiti of the machimi plays had turned real as the dust and the flowers and the sun.

And strangest of all to his ears came the silence that wasn’t silence, but the total absence, for the first time in his life that he was ever aware, of machine sounds. The sounds that reached his ears were rich enough, the wind and the creak of leather and jingle of harness and bridle rings, the scuff of gravel, the sighing of the grass along the hill—but he’d never been anywhere, even Taiben, where he couldn’t see power lines, or hear, however faintly, the sound of aircraft, or a passing train, or just the generalized hum of machinery working—and he’d never known it existed, until he heard its absence.

Below them, the miniaturized walls of Malguri, as few atevi surely ever were privileged to view them. There wasn’t a road, wasn’t a rail, wasn’t a trace of habitation aparent in all the hills and the lake shore, except those walls.

Time slipped again. He imagined the wind-stirred banners of the machimi plays, the meetings of treachery and connivance in the hills, the fortress destined for attack—how to get the lord into the open, or assassins within the walls, engaging single individuals, instead of armies … saving lives, saving resources, saving the land from future feuds.

And always, in such plays, the retainer with an ancestral grudge, the trusted assassin with the unevident
man’chi
, the thing the aiji on the windy ridge or the aiji within the fortress should have known and didn’t. One could all but hear the banners cracking in the wind, hear the rattle of armor … atevi civilization, atevi history that flourished now only in the machimi, on television—where human history flourished not at all.

There was something unexpectedly seductive about the textures … from the brightness of blood on the kill to the white and brown fur of the animal, from the casual drop of dung to the smell of flowers and the scent of crushed grass and the lazy switch of mecheita ears. It wasn’t the same reality as in the halls of the Bu-javid. It certainly wasn’t Mospheira. It was the atevi world as humans might never see it, neighboring, as they did, only the smoke-stacks and steam-engines of Shejidan.

It was a world that, given a hundred years, atevi themselves might never see again, or never understand, because the future that might have naturally grown from Malguri’s past—never would grow at all in a solely atevi way, now that Mospheira had given atevi the railroads and communications satellites, now that jets sped atevi travellers across the country too high and too fast to see a place like Malguri.

He argued with Tabini about meat, and seasons, and thought atevi ways … inconvenient.

But that argument was the same thing as the jets and the satellites. Another little piece of Malguri under attack.

Thinking of that word …

“Have you talked specifically to Banichi, nadi?” he asked Cenedi, who rode behind him. “I would hate to ride into security installations.”

Cenedi gave him an expressionless stare. “So would we, nadi.”

He knew
that
response. Helpful as a stone wall. Which said the paidhi wasn’t supposed to know about the installations—or that Cenedi didn’t know, and wasn’t in Banichi’s confidence, and now thought that
he
was, which couldn’t help matters if they rode into something he couldn’t foresee.

But the two men that had ridden out from their number at the beginning still hadn’t rejoined them—or even shown up again. They must be the other side of the ridge. And now and again Babs in particular would drop his head to sniff at the trail, Nokhada likewise—unexpected
little jolts and a pitch of Nokhada’s shoulder, but he learned to read the intent in the set of Nokhada’s ears and the general rhythm of her stride.

Not easy beasts to trap, he began to think. Not beasts that would go blindly into something wrong on the trail.

But he began to be easier on that account. Malguri’s grounds weren’t, then, the sort of weed-grown, desolate place where enterprising assassins could just come and go at will. The very presence of the mecheiti would dissuade intruders.

And one could legitimately believe, after all, that the power outage that still held in Malguri this morning was the legitimate result of a lightning strike, considering that power seemed to have gone out over a quarter of the township in the valley.

Ilisidi had asked if he had slept through the disturbance—no, Ilisidi had called it a lively night, and asked whether he’d slept through it.

Through what? Power failures? Or gunshots in the night, Tano’s nervous finger on the trigger, and Banichi on the radio?

Neither Banichi nor Jago had clued him what to do, if they’d had any idea of the proposed morning hunt. Neither of them had forewarned him he might be asked … had trusted him as the paidhi, maybe. Or just not known.

But Tabini, who doubtless knew the aiji-dowager as well as anyone in Shejidan, had said, regarding his dealings with Ilisidi—use your diplomacy.

Ilisidi slowed and stopped ahead of him, where the trail began a downward pitch again.

“From this place,” Ilisidi said, waving her hand to the view ahead, “you can see three provinces, Maidingi, Didaini, Taimani. How do you regard my land?”

“Beautiful,” he said honestly.

“
My land
, nand’ paidhi.”

Nothing Ilisidi said was idle, or without calculation.

“Your land, nai-ji. I confess I resisted being sent to Malguri. I thought it remote from my duties. I was mistaken.
I wouldn’t have known about the dragonettes otherwise. I wouldn’t have ridden, in all my life.” In the moment, he agreed inside with what he was saying, enjoying his brief respite from Banichi, Jago, and sane responsibility, enjoying—the atevi attitude was contagious—his chance to push the restrictions under which the paidhi necessarily lived and conducted business. “But Banichi will kill me when I get back.”

Ilisidi looked askance at him, and the corners of her mouth tightened.

Literal atevi minds. “Figuratively speaking, nai-ji.”

“You’re sure of my grandson.”

Disquieting question. “Should I have doubt, nai-ji?” Ilisidi was certainly the one to ask, but one couldn’t trust the answer. No one knew Ilisidi’s
man’chi
, where it lay. She had never made it clear, at least that he knew, and, presumably, if Banichi or Jago knew, they would have told him.

But no more did he know where Tabini’s was. That was always the way with aijiin—that they had none, or had none in reach of their subordinates.

“Tabini’s a steady lad,” Ilisidi said. “Young. Very young. Tech solves everything.”

A hint of her thoughts and her motives? He wasn’t sure. “Even the paidhi doesn’t maintain that to be the case, nai-ji.”

“Doesn’t the Treaty forbid—I believe this was your insistence—interference in our affairs?”

“That it does, nai-ji.” Dangerous ground. Very dangerous ground. Hell if this woman was as fragile as she looked. “Have I seemed to do contrary things? Please do me the kindness of telling me so.”

“Does my grandson tell you so?”

“If he told me I was interfering, I do swear to you, nai-ji, I would certainly reconsider my actions.”

She said nothing for a space. It left him, riding beside her in the windy silence, to think anxiously whether anything he had said or done or supported in the various
councils could be controversial, or as the dowager hinted, interfere in atevi affairs, or push technology too fast.

“Please, aiji-ji. Be blunt. Am I opposing or advancing a position with which you disagree?”

“What a strange question,” Ilisidi said. “Why should I tell you that?”

“Because I would try to find out your reasons, nai-ji, not to oppose your interests, not to preempt your resources—but to avoid areas of your extreme interest. Let me recall to you, we don’t use assassins, nai-ji. That’s not even a resource for us.”

“But they are, for atevi who may support you in your positions.”

He’d heard that argument before. He could get around it with Tabini. He longed after Tabini’s company, he longed only to ask him, forthrightly to learn things … that no one else was telling him lately.

And as now and again in the hours since he’d come to Malguri, he suffered another of those moments of dislocation—at one instant convinced that things were all right, and then, with no particular reason, doubting that, and recalling how completely he was isolated, more isolated than the paidhi had ever been from his resources.

“Forgive my question,” he said to Ilisidi. “But the paidhi isn’t always wise enough to understand his position in your affairs. I hope for your good opinion, nai-ji.”

“What do you hope to accomplish in your tenure?”

He hadn’t expected that question. But he’d answered it, repeatedly, in councils. “An advancement for atevi and humans, nai-ji. An advancement, a step toward technological equality, at a pace which won’t do harm.”

“That’s a given, isn’t it? By the Treaty, a dull and tedious given. Be less modest. Name the specific, wondrous thing you’d have done before you die … the gift you wish most, in your great wisdom, to bestow on us.”

He didn’t think it a harmless question. He could name certain things. He honestly didn’t have a clear answer.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“What, the paidhi without a notion what he wishes to do?”

“A step at a time, nai-ji. I don’t know what may be possible. And telling you … would in itself violate the principles …”

“The most ambitious thing you’ve ever advanced.”

“The rail system.”

“Pish. We invented the rail. You improved it.”

That was true, though atevi trains and steamships had been only the most rudimentary design, and boilers had burst with frightening regularity.

“So what more, paidhi? Rockets to the moons? Travel amongst the stars?”

A far more dangerous topic. “I’d like, yes, to see atevi at least reach that threshold in my lifetime. Nai-ji, so much is possible from there. So much you could do then. But we aren’t sure of the changes that would make, and I want to understand what would result. I want to give good advice. That’s my job, nai-ji.” He had never himself seen it so clearly, until now. “We’re at the edge of space. And so much changes once you can look down on the world.”

“What changes?”

One more dangerous question, this one cultural and philosophical. He looked outward, at the lake, the whole world seeming to lie below the path they rode.

“Height changes your perspective, nai-ji. We see three provinces from here. But my eye can’t see the treaty-boundaries.”

“Mine can. That mountain ridge. The river. They’re quite evident.”

“But were this mountain as high as the great moon, nai-ji, and if were you born on this very high mountain, would you see the lines? Or, if you saw them, would they mean to you what they mean to people born on the plain, these distant, invisible lines?”

“
Man’chi
is
man’chi. Man’chi
is important. And to a
dweller on the border—what meaning, these lines aijiin agree on?
Man’chi
is never visible.”

It was gratifying to expect the answer one got, the same that Tabini inevitably gave. It was gratifying to think one did accurately forecast atevi sentiments. It was useful to know about Ilisidi.

“So that wouldn’t change,” he said. “Even if you stood on the highest mountain.”

“
Man’chi
would never change,” Ilisidi said.

“Even if you left the sight of the world for years and years.”

“In hell and on earth,
man’chi
would not change. But you don’t understand this, you humans.” Babs struck a slight rise, and for a moment walked solitary, until Nokhada caught up. Ilisidi-dowager said, “Or you never tell your enemies, if you do change.”

That, too, was in the machimi plays. The catastrophic event, the overturning of a life’s understandings. But always toward the truth, as he saw it. Always toward what
man’chi
should have been.

Ilisidi offered no explanation of her remark. Perhaps he was supposed to have asked something wise. But imagination failed him.

“We truthfully didn’t understand your view of things, nai-ji, when we first arrived. We didn’t understand atevi. You didn’t understand us. That’s one of the great and unfortunate reasons of the War.”

“The unfortunate reason of the War was humans taking Mospheira, to which they had no right. It was hundreds of thousands of atevi dislodged from their homes. It was
man’chi
broken, because we couldn’t deal with your weapons, nand’ paidhi.” The dowager’s voice wasn’t angry, only severe, and emphatic. “And slowly you raise us up to have technology, and more technology. Does this not seem a foolish thing to do?”

Not the first time he’d met that question, either. Atevi asked it among themselves, when they thought the paidhi would hear no report of their discussion. Thwarted councilors
shouted it at the paidhi in council. Not even to Tabini could he give the untranslatable, the true answer: We thought we could make you our friends.