Foreigner: (10th Anniversary Edition) (39 page)

“You’re saying you weren’t at fault.”

“I’m saying atevi weren’t, either. I believe that.”

Cenedi tapped the fingers of one hand, together, against the desk, thinking, it seemed. Then: “An accident brought you to us. Was it a mistake of numbers?”

He found breath scarce in the room, perhaps the oil lamps, perhaps having gone in over his head with a very well-prepared man.

“We don’t know,” he said. “Or I don’t. I’m not a scientist.”

“But don’t your numbers describe nature? Was it a supernatural accident?”

“I don’t think so, nadi. Machinery may have broken. Such things do happen. Space is a vacuum, but it has dust, it has rocks—like trying to figure which of millions of dust motes you might disturb by breathing.”

“Then your numbers aren’t perfect.”

Another pitfall of heresy. “Nadi, engineers approximate, and nature corrects them. We
approach
nature. Our numbers work, and nature doesn’t correct us constantly. Only sometimes. We’re good. We’re not perfect.”

“And the War was one of these imperfections?”

“A very great one. —But we can
learn
, nadi. I’ve insulted Jago at least twice, but she was patient until I figured
it out. Banichi’s made me extremely unhappy—and I know for certain he didn’t know what he did, but I don’t cease to value associating with him. I’ve probably done harm to others I don’t know about,—but at least, at least, nadi, at very least we’re not angry with each other, and we each
know
that the other side means to be fair. We make a lot of mistakes … but people can make up their minds to be patient.”

Cenedi sat staring at him, giving him the feeling … he didn’t know why … that he had entered on very shaky ground with Cenedi. But he hadn’t lost yet. He hadn’t made a fatal mistake. He wished he knew whether Banichi knew where he was at the moment.

“Yet,” Cenedi said, “someone wasn’t patient. Someone attempted your life.”

“Evidently.”

“Do you have any idea why?”

“I have
no
idea, nadi. I truly don’t, in specific, but I’m aware some people just don’t like humans.”

Cenedi opened the drawer of his desk and took out a roll of paper heavy with the red and black ribbons of the aiji’s house.

Ilisidi’s, he thought apprehensively, as Cenedi passed it across the desk to him. He unrolled it and saw instead a familiar hand.

Tabini’s.

I send you a man, ‘Sidi-ji, for your disposition. I have filed Intent on his behalf for his protection from faceless agencies, not, I think, agencies faceless to you, but I make no complaint against you regarding a course of action which under extraordinary circumstances you personally may have considered necessary.

What is this? he thought and, in the sudden, frantic sense of limited time, read again, trying to understand was it Tabini’s threat
against
Ilisidi or was he saying Ilisidi was
behind
the attack on him?

And Tabini sent him
here?

Therefore I relieve you of that unpleasant and dangerous
necessity, ‘Sidi-ji, my favorite enemy, knowing that others may have acted against me invidiously, or for personal gain, but that you, alone, have consistently taken a stand of principle and policy against the Treaty.

Neither I nor my agents will oppose your inquiries or your disposition of the paidhi-aiji at this most dangerous juncture. I require only that you inform me of your considered conclusions, and we will discuss solutions and choices.

Disposition of the paidhi? Tabini, Tabini, for God’s sake, what are you
doing
to me?

My agents have instructions to remain hut not to interfere.

Tabini-aiji with profound respect

To Ilisidi of Malguri, in Malguri, in Maidingi Province
…

His hands shook. He tried not to let them. He read the letter two and three times, and found no other possible interpretation. It
was
Tabini’s handwriting. It
was
Tabini’s seal. There was no possible forgery. He tried to memorize the wording in the little time he reasonably had to hold the document, but the elaborate letters blurred in his eyes. Reason tried to intervene, interposing the professional, intellectual understanding that Tabini
was
atevi, that friendship didn’t guide him, that Tabini couldn’t even comprehend the word.

That Tabini, in the long run, had to act in atevi interests, and as an ateva, not in any human-influenced way that needed to make sense to him.

Intellect argued that he couldn’t waste time feeling anything, or interpreting anything by human rules. Intellect argued that he was in dire and deep trouble in this place, that he had a slim hope in the indication that Banichi and Jago were to stay here—an even wilder hope in the possibility Tabini might have been compelled to betray him, and that Tabini had kept Banichi and Jago on hand for a reason … a wild and improbable rescue …

But it was all a very thin, very remote possibility, considering
that Tabini had felt constrained to write such a letter at all.

And if Tabini was willing to risk the paidhi’s life and along with it the advantage of Mospheira’s technology, one could only conclude that Tabini’s power was threatened in some substantial way that Tabini couldn’t resist.

Or one could argue that the paidhi had completely failed to understand the situation he was in.

Which offered no hope, either.

He handed Cenedi back the letter with, he hoped, not quite so obvious a tremor in his hands as might have been. He wasn’t afraid. He found that curious. He was aware only of a knot in his throat, and a chill lack of sensation in his fingers.

“Nadi,” he said quietly. “I don’t understand. Are you the ones trying to kill me in Shejidan?”

“Not directly. But denial wouldn’t serve the truth, either.”

Tabini had armed him contrary to the treaty.

Cenedi had
killed
an assassin on the grounds. Hadn’t he?

The confusion piled up around him.

“Where’s Banichi? And Jago? Do they know about this? Do they know where I am?”

“They know. I say that denial of responsibility would be a lie. But I will also own that we are embarrassed by the actions of an associate who called on a licensed professional for a disgraceful action. The Guild has been embarrassed by the actions of a single individual acting for personal conviction. I personally—embarrassed myself, in the incident of the tea. More, you accepted my apology, which makes my duty at this moment no easier, nand’ paidhi. I assure you there is
nothing
personal in this confrontation. But I will do whatever I feel sufficient to find the truth in this situation.”

“What situation?”

“Nand’ paidhi. Do you ever mislead us? Do you ever tell us less—or more—than the truth?”

His hazard didn’t warrant rushing to judgment headlong—or dealing in on-the-spot absolutes, with a man the extent of whose information or misinformation he didn’t know. He tried to think. He tried to be absolutely careful.

“Nadi, there are times I may know … some small technical detail, a circuit, a mode of operation—sometimes a whole technological field—that I haven’t brought to the appropriate committee; or that I haven’t put forward to the aiji. But it’s not that I don’t intend to bring it forward, no more than other paidhiin have ever withheld what they know. There is no technology we have that I
intend
to withhold—ever.”

“Have you ever, in collaboration with Tabini, rendered additional numbers into the transmissions from Mospheira to the station?”

God.

“Ask the aiji.”

“Have those numbers been supplied to you by the aiji?”

“Ask him.”

Cenedi looked through papers, and looked up again, his dark face absolutely impassive. “I’m asking you, nand’ paidhi. Have those numbers been supplied to you by the aiji?”

“That’s Tabini’s business. Not mine.” His hands were cold. He worked his fingers and tried to pretend to himself that the debate was no more serious than a council meeting, at which, very rarely, the questions grew hot and quick. “If Tabini-aiji sends to Mospheira, I render what he says accurately. That’s my job. I wouldn’t misrepresent him, or Mospheira.
That
is my integrity, nadi Cenedi. I don’t lie to either party.”

Another silence, long and tense, in which the thunder of an outside storm rumbled through the stones.

“Have you always told the truth, nadi?”

“In such transactions? Yes. To both sides.”

“
I
have questions for you, in the name of the aiji-dowager. Will you answer them?”

The walls of the trap closed. It was the nightmare every paidhi had feared and no one had yet met, until, God help him, he had walked right into it, trusting atevi even though he couldn’t translate the concept of trust to them, persisting in trusting them when his own advisors said no, standing so doggedly by his belief in Tabini’s personal attachment to him that he
hadn’t
called his office when he’d received every possible warning things were going wrong.

If Cenedi wanted to use force now … he had no help. If Cenedi wanted him to swear that there
was
a human plot against atevi … he had no idea whether he could hold out against saying whatever Cenedi wanted.

He gave a slight, atevi shrug, a move of one hand. “As best I can,” he said, “I’ll answer, as best I personally know the answers.”

“Mospheira has … how many people?”

“About four million.”

“No atevi.”

“No atevi.”

“Have atevi ever come there, since the Treaty?”

“No, nadi. There haven’t. Except the airline crews.”

“What do you think of the concept of a paidhi-atevi?”

“Early on, we wanted it. We tried to get it into the Treaty as a condition of the cease fire, because we wanted to understand atevi better than we did. We knew we’d misunderstood. We knew we were partially responsible for the War. But atevi refused. If atevi were willing, now, absolutely I’d support the idea.”

“You’ve nothing to hide, you as a people? It wouldn’t provoke resentment, to have an ateva resident on Mospheira, admitted to your councils?”

“I think it would be very useful for atevi to learn our customs. I’d sponsor it. I’d argue passionately in favor of it.”

“You don’t fear atevi spies any longer.”

“I’ve told you—there are no more secrets. There’s nothing to spy on. We live very similar lives. We have
very similar conveniences. You wouldn’t know the difference between Adams Town and Shejidan.”

“I would not?”

“We’re very similar. And not—” he added deliberately, “not that all the influence has come from us to you, nadi. I tell you, we’ve found a good many atevi ideas very wise. You’d feel quite at home in some particulars. We have learned from you.”

He doubted Cenedi quite believed that. He saw the frown.

“Could there,” Cenedi asked him, “regarding the secrets you say you’ve provided—be any important area held back?”

“Biological research. Understanding of genetics. That’s the last, the most difficult.”

“Why is that the last?”

“Numbers. Like space. The size of the numbers. One hopes that computers will find more general acceptance among atevi. One
needs
computers, nadi, adept as you are in mathematics—you still need them. I confess I can’t follow everything you do in your heads, but you have to have the computers for space science, for record-keeping, and for genetics as we practice it.”

“The number-counters don’t believe that. Some say computers are inauspicious and misleading.”

“Some also do admit a fascination with them. I’ve heard some numerologists are writing software … and criticizing our hardware. They’re quite right. Our scientists are very interested in their opinions.”

“In atevi invention.”

“Very much so.”

“What can we possibly invent? Humans have done it all.”

“Oh, no, no, nadi, far from all. It’s a wide universe. And our ship did once break down.”

“Wide enough, this universe?”

He almost said—beyond calculation. But that was heresy.
“At least beyond what I know, nadi. Beyond any limit we’ve found with our ships.”

“Is it? But what use is it?”

Occasionally he met a new atevi attitude—inevitably astonishing. “What use is the earth, nadi? What use is the whole world except that we’re in it? It’s where we
are
, nadi. Its use is that we exist. There may be more important positions in the universe, but from where we stand, it’s all that
is
important.”

“You believe that some things are uncountable?”

The heresy pit again. He reached for an irrefutable answer, knowing that, if the wrong thing went down on tape—the extremists had him. “If one had the vision to see them, I’m sure one could count them.”

“Does anyone have universal vision?”

Another atevi sect, for all he knew. “I wouldn’t know, nadi. I’m certainly not that person.”

Damned if Cenedi believed the numerologists. But what Cenedi might want for political reasons, he had no way to guess. He wanted out of this line of questioning.

“More tea?” Cenedi asked him.

“Nadi, thank you, I have some left.”

“Do you suspect me personally as an enemy?”

“I don’t know. I certainly hope not. I’ve found your company pleasant and I hope it to continue.”

“There is nothing personal in my position, nand’ paidhi.”

“I trust so. I don’t know how I could have offended you. Certainly not by intent.”

“Heresy is not the charge here, understand. I find all the number-counting complete, primitive foolishness.”

“But tapes can be edited.”

“So can television,” Cenedi said. “You provided Tabini-aiji with abundant material today.”

The television? He’d put it from his mind, in the shock of reading Tabini’s letter. But now that Cenedi said it, he factored it in with that letter—all the personal, easy questions, about himself, his life, his associations.

Double-cross, by the only ateva he absolutely trusted with his life, double-cross by the aiji who held all the agreements with human civilization.