Foreigner: (10th Anniversary Edition) (38 page)

Cenedi sat down and offered the chair at the side of his desk. “Nand’ paidhi, please.” And with a wry irony: “Would you—I swear to its safety—care for tea?”

One could hardly refuse that courtesy. More, it explained the second man, there to handle the amenities, he supposed, in a discussion Cenedi might not want bruited about outside the office. “Thank you,” he said gratefully, and took the chair, while the guard poured a cup for him and one for Cenedi.

Cenedi dismissed the man then, and the man shut the door as he left. The two oil lamps on the wall behind the desk cast Cenedi’s broad-shouldered shape in exaggerated, overlapping shadows, emitted fumes that made the air heavy, as, one elbow on the desk, one hand occasionally
for the teacup, Cenedi sorted through papers on his desk as if those had the reason of the summons and he had lost precisely the one he wanted.

Then Cenedi looked straight at him, a flash of lambent yellow, the quirk of a smile on his face.

“How are you sitting this evening, nand’ paidhi? Any better?”

“Better.” It set him off his guard, made him laugh, a little frayed nerves, there, and he sat on it. Fast.

“Only one way to get over it,” Cenedi said. “The dowager’s guard sympathizes, nand’ paidhi. They laugh. But we’ve suffered. Don’t think their humor aimed at you.”

“I didn’t take it so, I assure you.”

“You’ve a fair seat for a beginner. I take it you don’t spend all your time at the desk.”

He was flattered. But not set off his guard a second time. “I spend it on the mountain, when I get the chance. About twice a year.”

“Climbing?”

“Skiing.”

“I’ve not tried that,” Cenedi said, shuffling more paper, trimming up a stack. “I’ve seen it on television. Some young folk trying it, up in the Bergid. No offense, but I’d rather a live instructor than a picture in a contraband catalog and some promoter’s notion how not to break your neck.”

“Is
that
where my mail’s been going?”

“Oh, there’s a market for it. The post tries to be careful. But things do slip.”

Is that what this is about? Bren asked himself. Someone stealing mail? Selling illicit catalogs?

“If you get me to the Bergid this winter,” he said, “I’d be glad to show you the basics. Fair trade for the riding lessons.”

Cenedi achieved a final, two-handed stack in his desk-straightening. “I’d like that, nand’ paidhi. On more than one account. I’d like to persuade the dowager back to Shejidan. Malguri is
hell
in the winter.”

They still hadn’t gotten to the subject. But it wasn’t uncommon in atevi business to meander, to set a tone. Atevi manners.

“Maybe we can do that,” he said. “I’d like to.”

Cenedi sipped his tea and set the cup down. “They don’t ride on Mospheira.”

“No. No mecheiti.”

“You hunt.”

“Sometimes.”

“On Mospheira?”

Were they talking about guns, now? Was that where this was going? “I have. A few times. Small game. Very small.”

“One remembers,” Cenedi said—as if any living atevi
could
remember. “Is it very different, Mospheira?”

“From Malguri?” One didn’t quite go off one’s guard. “Very. From Shejidan—much less so.”

“It was reputed—quite beautiful before the War.”

“It still is. We have very strict rules—protection of the rivers, the scenic areas. Preservation of the species we found there.”

Cenedi leaned back in his chair. “Do you think, nadi, there’ll be a time Mospheira will open up—to either side of the strait?”

“I hope it will happen.”

“But do you think it
will
happen, nand’ paidhi?”

Cenedi might have gotten to his subject, or might have led away from the matter of the gun simply to make him relax. He couldn’t figure—and he felt more than a mild unease. The question touched policy matters on which he couldn’t comment without consultation. He didn’t want to say no to Cenedi, when Cenedi was being pleasant. It could target whole new areas for Cenedi’s curiosity. “It’s my hope. That’s all I can say.” He took a sip of hot tea. “It’s what I work very hard for, someday to have that happen, but no paidhi can say when—it’s for aijiin and presidenti to work out.”

“Do you think this television interview is—what is your expression?—a step in the right direction?”

Is
that
it? Publicity? Tabini’s campaign for association with Mospheira? “Honestly, nadi Cenedi, I was disappointed. I don’t think we got to any depth. There are things I wanted to say. And they never asked me those. I wasn’t sure what they wanted to do with it. It worried me—what they might put in, that I hadn’t meant.”

“I understand there’s some thought about monthly broadcasts. The paidhi to the masses.”

“I don’t know. I certainly don’t decide things like that on my own. I’m obliged to consult.”

“By human laws, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not autonomous.”

“No. I’m not.” Early on, atevi had expected paidhiin to make and keep agreements—but the court in Shejidan didn’t have this misconception now, and he didn’t believe Cenedi was any less informed. “Though in practicality, nadi, paidhiin aren’t often overruled. We just don’t promise what we don’t think our council will accept. Though we do argue with our council, and sometimes we win.”

“Do you favor more interviews? Will you argue for the idea?”

Ilisidi was on the conservative side of her years. Probably she didn’t like television cameras in Malguri, let alone the idea of the paidhi on regular network broadcasts. He could imagine what she might say to Tabini.

“I don’t know what position I’ll argue. Maybe I’ll wait and see how atevi like the first one. Whether people
want
to see a human face—or not. I may frighten the children.”

Cenedi laughed. “Your face has already been on television, nand’ paidhi, at least the official clips. ‘The paidhi discussed the highway program with the minister of Works, the paidhi has indicated a major new release forthcoming in microelectronics …”’

“But that’s not an interview. And a still picture. I can’t understand why anyone would want to hear me discuss
the relative merits of microcircuits for an hour-long program.”

“Ah, but your microcircuits work by numbers. Such intricate geometries. The hobbyists would deluge the phone system. ‘Give us the paidhi,’ they’d say. ‘Let us hear the numbers.”’

He wasn’t sure Cenedi was joking at first. A few days removed from the Bu-javid and one could forget the intensity, the passion of the devout number-counters. He decided it
was
a joke—Tabini’s sort of joke, irreverent of the believers, impatient of the complications their factions created.

“Or people can think my proposals contain wicked numbers,” Bren said, himself taking a more serious turn. “As evidently some do think.” And a second diversion, Cenedi delaying to reveal his reasons. “—
Is
it a blown fuse, this time, nadi?”

“I think it’s a short somewhere. The breaker keeps going off. They’re trying to find the source.”

“Jago received some message from Banichi a while ago that distressed her, and she left. It worried me, nadi. So did your summons. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

“Banichi’s working with the house maintenance staff. I don’t know what he might have found, but he’s extremely exacting. His subordinates do hurry when they’re asked.” Cenedi took another drink of tea, a large one, and set the cup down. “I wouldn’t worry about it. He’d have advised me, I think, if he’d found anything irregular. Certainly house maintenance would, independent of him. —Another cup, nadi?”

He’d diverted Cenedi from his conversation. He was obligated to another cup. “Thank you,” he said, and started to get up to get his own tea, in the absence of a servant, and not suggesting Cenedi do the office, but Cenedi signaled otherwise, reached a long arm across the corner of the desk, picked up the pot and poured for him and for himself.

“Nadi, a personal curiosity—and I’ve never had the paidhi at hand to ask: all these years you’ve been dealing out secrets. When will you be out of them? And what will you do then?”

Odd that no one had ever asked the paidhiin that quite that plainly … on
this
side of the water, although God knew they agonized over it on Mospheira.

And perhaps that
was
Cenedi’s own and personal question, though not
the
question, he was sure, which Cenedi had called him downstairs specifically to answer. It was the sort of thing an astute news service might ask. The sort of thing a child might … not a political sophisticate like Cenedi, not officially.

But it was very much the sort of question he’d already begun to hint at in technical meetings, testing the waters, beginning, one hoped, to shift attitudes among atevi, and knowing atevi couldn’t go much farther down certain paths without developments resisted for years by vested interests in other departments.

“Things don’t only flow one way across the strait, nadi. We learn from
your
scientists, quite often. Not to say we’ve stood still ourselves since the Landing. But the essential principles have been on the table for a hundred years. I’m not a scientist—but as I understand it, it’s the intervening steps, the things that atevi science has to do before the principles in other areas become clear—those are the things still missing. There’s materials science. There’s the kind of industry it takes to support the science. And the education necessary for new generations to understand it. The councils are still debating the shape of baffles in fuel tanks—when no one’s teaching the students in the schools
why
you need a slosh baffle in the first place.”

“You find us slow students?”

That
trap was obvious as a pit in the floor. And damned right they’d expected atevi to pick things up faster—give or take aijiin who wouldn’t budge and committees that wouldn’t release a process until they’d debated it to
death. An incredibly short path to flight and advanced metallurgy. An incredibly difficult one to get a damn bridge built as it needed to be to stand the stresses of heavy-hauling trains.

“Extremely quick students,” he said, “interminable debaters.”

Cenedi laughed. “And humans debate nothing.”

“But we don’t have to debate the technology, nadi Cenedi. We
have
it. We
use
it.”

“Did it bring you success?”

Watch it, he thought.
Watch
it. He gave a self-deprecating shrug, atevi-style. “We’re comfortable in the association we’ve made. The last secrets
are
potentially on the table, nadi. We just can’t get atevi conservatives to accept the essential parts of them. Our secrets are full of numbers. Our numbers describe the universe. And how can the universe be unfortunate? We are confused when certain people claim the numbers add in anything but felicitous combination. We can only believe nature.” He was talking to
Ilisidi’s
seniormost guard, Ilisidi, who chose to reside in Malguri. Ilisidi, who hunted for her table—but believed in the necessity of dragonettes. “Surely, in my own opinion, not an expert opinion, nadi, someone must have added in what nature didn’t put in the equations.”

It was a very reckless thing to say, on one level. On the other, he hadn’t said
which
philosophy of numbers he faulted and which he favored, out of half a dozen he personally knew in practice, and, human-wise,
couldn’t
do in his head. He personally wanted to know where Cenedi, personally, stood—and Cenedi’s mouth tightened in a rare amusement.

“While the computers you design secretly assign unlucky attributes,” Cenedi said wryly. “And swing the stars in their courses.”

“Not that I’ve seen happen. The stars go where nature has them going, nadi Cenedi. The same with the reasons for slosh baffles.”

“Are we superstitious fools?”

“Assuredly not. There’s nothing
wrong
with this world. There’s nothing wrong with Malguri. There’s nothing
wrong
with the way things worked before we arrived. It’s just—if atevi want what we know—”

“Counting numbers is folly?”

Cenedi wanted him to admit to heresy. He had a sudden, panicked fear of a hidden tape recorder—and an equal fear of a lie to this man, a lie that would break the pretense of courtesy with Cenedi before he completely understood what the game was.

“We’ve given atevi true numbers, nadi, I’ll swear to that. Numbers that work, although some doubt them, even in the face of the evidence of nature right in front of them.”

“Some doubt human good will, more than they doubt the numbers.”

So it
wasn’t
casual conversation Cenedi was making. They sat here by the light of oil lamps—
he
sat here, in Cenedi’s territory, with his own security elsewhere and, for all he knew, uninformed of his position, his conversation, his danger.

“Nadi, my predecessors in the office never made any secret how we came here. We arrived at this star completely by accident, and completely desperate. We’d no idea atevi existed. We didn’t want to starve to death. We saw our equipment damaged. We knew it was a risk to us and, I admit it, to you, for us to go down from the station and land—but we saw atevi already well advanced down a technological path very similar to ours. We
thought
we could avoid harming anyone. We
thought
the place where we landed was remote from any association—since it had no buildings. That was the first mistake.”

“Which party do you consider made the second?”

They were charting a course through ice floes. Nothing Cenedi asked was forbidden. Nothing he answered was controversial—right down the line of the accepted truth as paidhiin had told it for over a hundred years.

But he thought for a fleeting second about the mecheiti, and about atevi government, while Cenedi waited—too long, he thought, to let him refuse the man some gain.

“I blame the War,” he said, “on both sides giving wrong signals. We thought we’d received encouragement to things that turned out quite wrong, fatally wrong, as it turned out.”

“What sort of encouragement?”

“We thought we’d received encouragement to come close, encouragement to treat each other as …” There wasn’t a word. “Known. After we’d developed expectations. We went to all-out war
after
we’d had a promising beginning of a settlement. People who think they were betrayed don’t believe twice in assurances.”