Invader (24 page)

In which he held himself and his motives and his mental condition entirely suspect. The aftershocks of an irrevocable, previously confident decision were rumbling through the mental landscape, disturbing precarious balance. He felt slightly sick at his stomach. He questioned his motives and his sanity this time from hindsight, not theoretical actions. Reality always put a texture on things, a chaotic topography of imperfections, that imagination had foreseen as smooth and featureless. Now it was all in past-tense conversation between two minds, not one mind reasoning with itself. Now it was interaction with a very potent and distance-wise inscrutable third party, as well as a Department that was going to ask the paidhi what in
hell
he thought he was doing.

"Nadiin," Tabini said, "we are adjourned. Nand' paidhi, thank you."

"Aiji-ma," he murmured, and with one aide to help with die chair and another to help with the computer, he gathered himself up, still with that hollow feeling inside, and collected his belongings.

Lord Eigji of the Commerce Committee cleared his path to the door — perhaps in consideration of his small stature and his necessary awkwardness with the outward-braced cast — but such a reversal of ordinary protocols of rank required first the acknowledgment of a bow of the head, then puzzled afterthought, so deep a thought he knocked the doorframe with the cast in leaving and, expecting Jago, didn't look up quite enough: his view was suddenly and entirely black leather and silver metal.

"I have it," Banichi said, and collected the computer from his hand.

"Where have you
been
, nadi?" was his first unthought question, while they were still blocking atevi lords from die doorway.

Banichi led him aside before saying, "Sleeping, nand' paidhi. One has to, eventually."

It wasn't at all the truth. He gave not-the-truth back to it. "I never was sure you did that."

He amused Banichi. That Banichi could be amused was a reassuring stroke in itself: if Banichi was in good humor then something that was security's concern must have gone right.

One had to wonder, on the other hand, where Jago had gone now, and he wasn't at all sure it was back to the residence, but the recipient of their duty couldn't pursue the question, even in the most security-conscious area of the Bu-javid —

Or especially because they were here, in an area where anxious, life-and-death interests hung close about them.

They walked toward the lift not quite elbow to elbow with the lords of the Association, but possibly within earshot.

"I have to go to my office, if not today, tomorrow," he said, off his balance in this switch of personnel; he'd mapped out how to deal with Jago. And atevi had changed the situation on him again without warning. "I have to find out what's been done there — I need to consult with Hanks."

"I thought you'd declared war on her."

"Not — quite that far. Understand, please, Banichi-ji. I don't want her to come to harm."

"You must be the only one on the mainland," Banichi said, "to say so."

"We can't allow it, Banichi. Can't. Daren't. — Where is Jago?" They'd reached a relatively isolated area by the lift that served the more securitied floors, and he pounced on the first chance for the question. "Algini's back, did you know? You go, Jago goes, you come back, Algini's got the foyer stacked with my luggage —"

"Shush." It was the word one used with a child. "You're due upstairs. Rest, Bren-ji. It is a physical necessity."

"Cenedi said there was trouble going on."

Banichi had pushed the call button. The car had arrived, but Banichi lingered to cast him a curious look. "Cenedi said," Banichi reiterated.

"Cenedi said — he'd stand with you in the Guild, if he had a choice."

"
Did
he?"

They had to take the car or lose it. Banichi swept him inside and followed.

With no intent, it seemed, of answering his question, even in general. But he thought Banichi had been at least taken off his guard by that information.

And gave nothing back.

"Banichi, dammit."

Banichi found it convenient to watch the floor indicator. Banichi was dressed fit for a council meeting: official, impervious, unruffled by whatever was going on.

"A man died last night," Bren said sharply.

"One heard." Banichi still didn't look at him.

"Banichi — one could arrange one's affairs ever so much more wisely if one's security told him something! I am
not
a fool, Banichi, don't treat me as one."

Banichi offered a small, frayed smile. "Bren-ji, it's your task to deal with ships and such. It's ours to see you aren't diverted by extraneous matters."

"The man had a family, Banichi. I can't forget that."

The car stopped. The door opened.

"We can't discuss it here. Not a secure area, Bren-ji."

"What is? Besides the apartment I'm borrowing from —" But the microphones which evidently worried Banichi, which Banichi had equipment to detect, surely all that were in this hall served Tabini, and therefore were accessible to Damiri.

It was that small uncertainty that stopped him.

And why? he said to himself.
Why
could there be any question about third-floor security that Banichi couldn't make sure of?

Who was up here, with access to this floor, but staffs that held
man'chi
to Tabini, to —

To the Atigeini woman who'd offered him her hospitality — and whose family opposed Tabini.

Banichi stopped at the door to take out his key, and said, under his breath, "More than one man is dead, Bren-ji. Amateurs. I swear to you, it's amateurs will bring us down. I'm sure it's television. It plants foolish ideas in foolish heads that otherwise couldn't remotely conceive such plans."

"You mean the representative from —"

"One means that the Guild has refused arguments, bribes and coercion to undertake contracts against the paidhi." Banichi opened the door into a foyer miraculously void of boxes. "Jago's aim was accurate. His damaged a historical artifact.
That
— is the difference, among others. Kindly stay out of crowds, nadi."

The Assassins' Guild operated by strict rules. They accosted you in hallways, they turned up in your bedroom, they met you on the steps outside, but they didn't endanger bystanders, they didn't take out accidental targets, and most of all they required the person who hired them to meet certain criteria of responsibility and to file Intent with the authorities. Who notified you. Formally. In some ways — in their Guild deliberations on what contracts to accept and what to reject — they
were
atevi lawyers.

But the paidhi hadn't acquired an assassin of Banichi's and Jago's class; he'd touched off some middle-aged man with a family.

And probably nobody in the world remembered what he'd said last night. They'd just seen a man die, and nobody might even remember the difficult points he'd had to convince them of — the points he'd spent all his credit with his own government to make — and that thought brought a crashing depression — an aftershock, maybe — but with it a sense of being in well over his head.

He walked into the apartment with Banichi and found the message bowl overflowing onto the table. Tano met their arrival; so did madam Saidin: Saidin with grave courtesy, Tano with relief evident.

Which said to him Jago was
not
simply napping. And neither had Banichi been. Algini came from inside the security quarters, and Banichi and Algini were quite professional, quite matter-of-fact in their meeting.

The tenor of which said to him that Algini's presence in no way surprised Banichi and that Banichi just might have been at the airport when Algini came in.

"Nand" paidhi," Tano said, meanwhile, "Hanks-paidhi has called. Three times."

Oh, God, he hadn't countermanded the call and recall order. The operator had been ringing Hanks since die afternoon.

"Did she leave any message?"

"She was extremely angry. She said she wanted to speak with you personally."

"I do apologize, Tano."

"My job, nand' paidhi. I'm glad to intercept it. There are telegrams from Mospheira. Three, nand' paidhi. I wouldn't mention any business I could manage widiout consulting, but —"

He was tired. He was suddenly drained, and shaken, and he couldn't take his own damn coat off himself. The servant had to help him with it — her name was — he'd heard her name —

"I can't," he was forced to admit, and found his voice wobbling. "I can't — Tano, I'm sorry, I can't deal with these things tonight."

"Bren-ji is exhausted," Banichi said as the last of the tape came free of the sleeve and Bren escaped the coat. He just wanted his bed. Just that. Soft pillows. No questions.

But he was scared what might have come in those messages. He hoped one of them was from the President, accepting his position. He hoped it wasn't damning him for a fool and ordering his recall for arrest.

He had at least just to glance through those three and know what they were. He broke the seal on the first one, in his awkward, arm-braced procedure. It was from Barb.

Bren
, it said.
I
didn't know. I feel so bad. Please call me
.

He was numb, at first reading. Then he tossed it casually back into the message basket. He was angry — maybe as angry as he'd ever been at anyone in his life.

Or hurt. He couldn't decide. He couldn't ask himself for coherent judgment right now, least of all to judge Barb. He opened the second telegram, which proved to be from his mother. It said,
Sorry I missed you at the hospital
, but after that, the censors had made lace out of it. Not a damned sentence in the thing was intact but that, and whatever his mother had meant to say — God knew. He couldn't decipher anything from the I's and a's and the's.

Which meant his mother had said things critical to security — and his mother never knew anything critical to security. There was nothing she ever had to say to him that the censors would reasonably block, it just wasn't in her knowledge of the universe.

Something could have happened at home, maybe something they didn't want him to hear right now — but then why did the censors let that one line get through, when they could have stalled the whole letter? They could have sent the telegram down a black hole and he wouldn't have known it and his mother wouldn't have, until they could compare notes — so why worry him, if they were just trying to save him from worry in the first place? He didn't understand what was going on. They hadn't censored Barb, who'd certainly disturbed him, and those personal matters weren't likely secret from Departmental censors. It didn't make sense.

The third was from the State Department. It began,
Field Officer Cameron
: the title the State Department accorded him, though there was only one field and only one officer; it launched straight into
The Department advises you on behalf of the President that it is taking your report under advisement. In the meantime, it orders in the strongest possible terms that you make no further translation of intercepted transmissions
…

Oh, well, he thought, that's all. He was too numb to give a damn and too far along the course to damnation to Slink it mattered. He tossed that telegram straight into the wastebasket, to the shock of Tano and bystanders, then gathered up Barb's and his mother's and chucked them after it.

Ilisidi's message cylinder had come back again. He opened that last. It said,
An old woman desires your company on any morning you feel inclined. You improve our circulation. And you have such pretty hair
.

He read it three times, with a lump in his throat and the illegitimate and fatal satisfaction of believing one living being in the universe enjoyed his company; one lord of the Association didn't want to buy him, kill him, or use him — or wasn't assigned by Tabini to protect him. Very opposite things were the possibility. But, dammit, at least he knew what and why.

He gave that cylinder to Tano. "Nadi, a courteous appreciation to the dowager, with my desire to join her at breakfast sometime very soon. Tell the lady dowager — tell her I treasure her flattery. Please see it delivered tonight. Order a felicitous arrangement of flowers with the message."

He surely shocked Tano, on more than one account.

Then he wandered off, out of the foyer toward his own bed, forgetful until he was in his own doorway that he'd left Banichi without a second look or a word of courtesy — but Banichi probably had his own instructions to give to Tano and Algini, or maybe Banichi just lingered to share a cup of tea with people who didn't ask him unanswerable questions.

At least Banichi was back — and Jago had vanished, if she wasn't in her room asleep, as Banichi had claimed to have been.

Maybe, he thought muzzily, they took waking turns at whatever they were doing, which he knew in his heart of hearts was Tabini's business, and Tabini's security. They'd never left him alone, nor would. He could rely on that. Popular as he was making himself — he had to rely on it.

He'd made Hanks mad. He was too tired to deal with it. Hell, he probably could start by apologizing, but he wasn't interested.

He undressed with the help of a half dozen demure servants, made his requisite nest in his bed, propped his cast with pillows, and only as he lay down realized they'd installed the television he requested, against the far wall, and a turn of his head found not only the requested water glass but a television remote within his reach at the bedside table. His nerves were one long buzz of exhaustion, his senses threatening to blank out on him, which he wished would just happen: he wanted to shut his eyes and let his mind spiral down to the sleep he'd won. But,
Please call
, Barb said.

Bloody damn hell. Call. Calling might have been in order, all right — for her to call him when he was in town — at least to have called the hospital. She'd probably been off on her honeymoon.

He'd forgiven her — everything but that "Please call," the way she'd always say when they'd disagreed. She knew the hours he kept in a work crisis, she knew she should call in the morning if she wanted to catch him with a personal problem. But, no, he should call her. Tonight.
He
should call
her
. He should do the negotiating, meaning cajole her into doling out this little reaction and that little reaction until he guessed his way through her crisis and placated
her
.