Foreigner: (10th Anniversary Edition)

by C. J. Cherryh

  “I feel faint. It must be the tea.”

  “Please, nadi, don’t joke.”

  “I can’t deal with them!”

  “This would reflect very badly on many people, nadi. Surely you understand—”

  “I cannot decide such policy changes on my own, Jago! It’s not in the authority I was given—”

  “Refusal of these people must necessarily have far-reaching effect. I could not possibly predict, Bren-ji, but can you not comply at least in form? This surely won’t air immediately, and if there should be policy considerations, surely there could be ameliorations. Tabini has recommended these people. Reputations are assuredly at stake in this.”

  Jago was no mean lawyer herself—versed in man’chi and its obligations, at least, and the niceties on which her profession accepted or didn’t accept grievances. Life and death. Justified and not. And she had a point. She had serious points.

  “May I see the letter, Bren-ji? I don’t, of course, insist on it, but it would make matters clearer.”

  He handed it over. Jago walked over to the window to read it, not, he thought, because she needed the light.

  “I believe,” she said, “you’re urged to be very frank with these people, nadi. I think I understand Tabini-aiji’s thinking, if I may be so forward. If anything should happen to you—it would be very useful to have popular sympathy.”

  “If anything should happen to me.”

  “Not fatally. But we have taken an atevi life.”

  He stood stock still, hearing from Jago what he thought he heard. It was her impeccable honesty. She could not perceive that there was prejudice in what she said. She was thinking atevi politics. That was her job, for Tabini and for him.

  “An atevi life.”

  “We’ve taken it in defense of yours, nand’ paidhi. It’s our man’chi to have done so. But not everyone would agree with that choice.”

  He had to ask. “Do you, nadi?”

  Jago delayed her answer a moment. She folded the letter. “For Tabini’s sake I certainly would agree. May I keep this in file, nadi?”

  “Yes,” he said, and shoved the affront out of his mind. What did you expect? he asked himself, and asked himself what was he to do without consultation, what might they ask and what dared he say?

  Jago simply took the letter and left, through his bedroom, without answering his question.

  An honest woman, Jago was, and she’d given him no grounds at all to question her protection. It wasn’t precisely what he’d questioned—but she doubtless didn’t see it that way.

  He’d alienated Banichi and now he’d offended Jago. He wasn’t doing well at all today.

  “Jago,” he called after her. “Are you going down to the airport?”

  Atevi manners didn’t approve yelling at people, either. Jago walked all the way back to answer him.

  “If you wish. But what I read in the letter gives me little grounds on which to delay these people, nand’ paidhi. I can only advise Banichi of your feelings. I don’t see how I could do otherwise.”

  He was at the end of his resources. He made a small, weary bow. “About what I said. I’m tired, nadi, I didn’t express myself well.”

  “I take no offense, Bren-ji. The opinion of these people is uninformed. Shall I attempt to reach Banichi?”

  “No,” he said in despair. “No. I’ll deal with them. Only suggest to Tabini on my behalf that he’s put me in a position which may cost me my job.”

  “I’ll certainly convey that,” Jago said. And if Jago said it that way, he did believe it.

  “Thank you, nadi,” he said, and Jago bowed and went on through the bedroom.

  He followed, with a vacation advertisement and a crafts catalog, which he figured for bathtub reading.

  Goodbye to the hour-long bath. He rang for Djinana to advise him of the change in plans, he shed the coat in the bedroom, limped down the hall into the bathroom and shed dusty, spit-stained clothes in the hamper on the way to the waiting tub.

  The water was hot, frothed with herbs, and he would have cheerfully spent half the day in it, if Djinana would only keep pouring in warm water. He drowned the crafts catalog, falling asleep in mid-scan—just dropped his hand and soaked it: he found himself that tired and that little in possession of his faculties.

  But of course Tano came in to say a van had pulled up in the portico, and it was television people, with Banichi, and they were going to set up downstairs. Would the paidhi care to dress?

  The paidhi would care to drown, rather than put on court formality and that damned tailored coat, but Tabini had other plans.

  He’d not brought his notes on the transportation problems. He thought he should have. It went to question after question, until at least numbness had set in where he met the chair and where an empty stomach protested the lack of lunch.

  “What,” the interviewer asked then, “determines the rate of turnover of information? Isn’t it true that all these systems exist on Mospheira?”

  “Many do.”

  “What wouldn’t?”

  “We don’t use as much rail. Local air is easier. The interior elevations make air more practical for us.”

  “But you didn’t present that as an option to the aiji two hundred years ago.”

  “We frankly worried that we’d be attacked.”

  “So there are other considerations than the environment.”

  Sharp interviewer. And empowered by someone to ask questions that might not make the broadcast, but—might, still. Tabini had confidence in this man, and sent him.

  “There’s also the risk,” he said, “of creating problems among atevi. You had rail—you almost had rail at the time of the Landing. If we’d thrown air travel into Shejidan immediately, it might have provoked disturbances among the outlying Associations. Not everyone believed Barjida-aiji would share the technology. And better steam trains were a lot less threatening. We could have turned over rockets. We could have said, in the very first negotiations—here’s the formula for dynamite. And maybe irresponsible people would have decided to drop explosives on each other’s cities. We’d just been through a war. It was hard enough to get it stopped. We didn’t want to provide new weapons for another one. We could have dropped explosives from planes, when we built them. But we didn’t want to do that.”

  “That’s a good point,” the interviewer said.

  He hoped it was. He hoped people thought about it.

  “We don’t ever want a war,” he said. “We didn’t have much choice about being on this planet. We caused harm we didn’t intend or want. It seems a fair repayment, what the Treaty asked.”

  “Is there a limit to what you’ll turn over?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “What about highways?”

  Damn, that question again. He drew a breath to think about it. “Certainly I’ve seen the realities of transportation in the mountains. I intend to take my observations to our council. And I’m sure the nai-aijiin will have recommendations to me, too.”

  A little laughter at that. And a sober next question: “Yet you alone, rather than the legislature, determine whether a town gets the transport it needs.”

  “Not myself alone. In consultation with the aiji, with the councils, with the legislatures.”

  “Why not road development?”

  “Because—”

  Because mecheiti followed the leader. Because Babs was the leader, and Nokhada hadn’t a choice, without fighting that Nokhada didn’t want, damned stupid idea, and he had to say something to that question, something that didn’t insult atevi.

  “Because,” he said, trapped. “We couldn’t predict what might happen. Because we saw the difficulties of regulation.” He panicked. He was losing the threads of it, not making sense, and not making sense sounded like a lie, “We feared at the outset the allocation of road funds might cause division within the Association. A breakdown of an authority we didn’t understand.”

  The interviewer hesitated, p
olitely expressionless. “Are you saying, nand’ paidhi, that this policy was based on misapprehension?”

  Oh, God. “Initially, perhaps,” The mind snapped back into focus. The village problem was the atevi concern. “But we don’t think it would have led to a solution for the villages. If there’d been highways a hundred, two hundred years ago, there’d have been a growth in unregulated commerce. If that had happened—the commercial interests would build where the biggest highways were, and the straighter the highways, the more big population centers in a row, the more attraction they’d be—while no one but the aiji would have defended the remote villages, who still would have trouble getting transportation, very much what we have now, but we’d also have the pollution from the motors and the concentration of even more political power into the major population strings, along those roads. I see a place for a road system—in the villages, not the population centers, as spur lines to the centralized transport system.”

  He didn’t engage the interviewer’s interest. He’d gotten too detailed, too technical, or at least promised to lead to technical matters the interviewer didn’t want or felt his audience didn’t want. He sensed the shift in intention, as the interviewer shifted position and frowned. He was glad of it. The interviewer posed a few more questions, about where he lived, about family associations, about what he did on vacation, thank God, none of them critical. He was sweating under the lights when the interview wound to its close and the interviewer went through the obligatory courtesies.

  “Thank you, nand’ paidhi,” the man said, and Bren withheld the sigh of relief as the lights went out.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at once, “I’m not used to cameras. I’m afraid I wasn’t very coherent at all.”

  “You speak very well, nand’ paidhi, much better than some of our assignments, I assure you. We’re very pleased you found the time for us.” The interviewer stood up, he stood up, Banichi stood up, from the shadowed fringes, where the lights had obscured his presence. Everyone bowed. The interviewer offered a hand to shake. Someone must have told him that.

  “You’ve been informed on our customs,” he ventured to say, and the interviewer was pleased and bowed, shaking hands with a crushing grip.

  There was the commercial plane returning at sunset. The news crew had another assignment in Maidingi, on the electrical outage. Thank God. The crew was packing up lights, disconnecting cable run like an infestation of red and black vines across the ancient carpets, from the remote hallways. Maigi went to retrieve the far end somewhere near the kitchens, where, Bren was sure, the staff was not eager to admit strangers. Everything folded away into boxes. The glass-eyed animals stared back from the walls, as amazed and dazed as the paidhi.

  What have I done? he asked himself, asked himself if he could justify everything he’d said, when he wrote his report to Mospheira, but they’d kept off sensitive topics—he’d accomplished that much, give or take his mental lapse on the highway question.

  “We’d like to do more such interviews,” the man said—he could not recall the name: Daigani or something like it. “We’d be delighted to tape one, nand’ paidhi, actually in Mospheira. Perhaps reciprocal arrangements with your television, but one of our crews actually on site—interviews with ordinary people, that sort of thing.”

  “Certainly if something of the sort could be worked out,” he answered. It was the answer to any unlikely proposal. He couldn’t have it go to Mospheira as something he’d agreed to. “I could contact the appropriate people—” It was a deliberate, Give me a phone, challenge to Banichi and Jago and Tabini. A dozen uneasy thoughts slithered through the back of his mind. The news services had to know that someone had tried to kill him, and no one had mentioned that fact. He hadn’t. The Bu-javid’s conspiratorial attitude about security seeped into the blood and bone of those who lived there—one didn’t talk to the press without authorization, one didn’t carry gossip, one left it to the departments with authority to state official policy.

  But he couldn’t tell the news that a man had died here yesterday? Or they knew and didn’t ask?

  He didn’t know what had gone out on the news in the last week. He didn’t know what was common knowledge and what wasn’t, and the policy of his office said keep quiet when you didn’t know.

  So he made polite expressions and bowed and sweated, still, in spite of the cooling of the air. A front was moving in. The crew hoped their flight would beat it out. They’d ridden through the front this morning, a choppy, bumpy flight, what Jago called ‘long,’ and the news crew called ‘uncomfortable.’

  But the front doors were open now, with the wind blowing through, and the light coming in, brighter than the electric bulbs in this hall, which only managed a wan, golden glow. The crew carried out their lights, the interviewer lingered for small talk, and Tano and Algini had their heads together over by the door, watching the crew carry the equipment—Algini had come up with them. So had Banichi. Jago was … somewhere, probably resting; and meanwhile the thoughts about what he’d said and what he’d thought kept jostling one another at the back of his mind, clamoring for attention and further analysis.

  Banichi carefully disengaged the interviewer, then, and walked him as far as the door, where one last round of bows was obligatory.

  Bren made his own courtesies, and, with the last of the crew outside, leaned his shoulders against the shadowed back of the door and sighed in relief.

  “Tano and Aligini will see them down to the airport,” Banichi said, turning up as a shadow out of the sunlight. “They may stay down, for supper. I discovered a good restaurant.”

  “That’s fine,” he said, and didn’t ask Why don’t we ail go? because most patrons didn’t like assassinations during the salad course. He realized he’d been nervous as hell about the interview, not alone because of the questions that might turn up, but because he didn’t trust the crew with all those boxes of equipment, and because he didn’t know these people.

  He’d become, he decided, thoroughly paranoid. Afraid. And he didn’t think a crew from the national news network was going to produce explosive devices.

  It was stupid.

  “You did very well, nand’ paidhi.”

  “I couldn’t get my thoughts together. I could have done better.”

  “Tabini thinks there should be more of these interviews,” Banichi said. “He thinks it’s time the paidhi became more public. More in touch with the people.”

  “Is that going to stop the people that don’t want me alive?” He didn’t mean to be negative. Doubtless the move was a good idea. Doubtless Tabini thought so. But his uneasy feeling persisted.

  “Why don’t you go upstairs, nadi, and get out of the coat? You can relax now.”

  He didn’t know if he could manage to relax, for the rest of the day, but the coat collar chafed, and he’d gotten stiff, sitting still. It was more than a good idea, to go up and change clothes. It was the only thing they’d let him do or decide for the rest of the day. His grand single decision.

  Until tomorrow,

  He said, because it was politic at the moment and because he’d meant it, earlier, and sullenly told himself he would, again: “I was rude last night, Banichi, forgive me.”

  “I didn’t notice,” Banichi said. Banichi’s attention was out the door, toward the van, the doors of which were slamming shut.

  “I’m sorry about your associate. And for your instructors.”

  “It was none of your doing. Or mine. One only wishes he had been wiser—but no more successful.” Banichi laid a hand on his shoulder, only half welcome. “Go upstairs, nadi.”

  Go away, don’t bother me. The paidhi could translate. Banichi’s thoughts were elsewhere, and he—after the heat of the lights—decided he was going to go back upstairs and finish the bath he’d had to leave. People didn’t bother him in the bath. He didn’t have to talk philosophy in the bath. And it helped a soreness he didn’t want to discuss with the servants.

  It took no little time to
fire up the boiler again, and run water. He took the time for a light lunch, in which he read the first committee letters, then thought—how quickly the mind dropped into familiar ruts—that he should take computer notes.

  But they didn’t run extension cords from the kitchen for the paidhi, no, just for news cameramen, and no one mentioned going back to Shejidan.

  So he had his bath, leaned his head back on the rim of the tub, steam rising around him. He had a glass of the human-compatible liquor sitting by him, and a stack of catalogs … the vacation catalog, among them, plus one for sports equipment—not that he had any reasonable use for a second pair of skis, or another ski suit, but, then, almost all his catalog-perusing was wishful.

  Thunder rumbled through the stones. He wondered idly if the news crew’s commercial flight had made it out on schedule. He truly hoped so. He wanted them out and away. He wondered, too, what Algini and Tano were up to in the rustic pleasures of Maidingi township. Sightseeing around the lake shore, maybe. One hoped they wouldn’t be soaked.

  He had a sip from the sweating glass—ice in good liquor? Tabini had asked him incredulously, early in their acquaintance.

  Djinana, presented with such a request, had raised his brows and blinked, much more diplomatic. And with the power on again, and the lights working, ice did exist in the kitchens.

  He turned the page and considered ski boots, scanned the art and culture inset, a service of the company, which described the recovery of old art from the data banks. Read the article on the building of the Mt. Allan Thomas resort, the first luxury establishment on Mospheira, where a hardy few had resurrected the idea of skiing.

  Atevi were lately showing an interest in the sport, on their own mountains. Tabini called it suicide—then seemed to show a grudging flicker of interest himself, when he’d seen the homemade skiing tapes the paidhi had cleared through the Commission.

  A potential common passion, human and atevi. Good for relations.

  He’d almost talked Tabini into trying it, if the damned security crisis hadn’t blown up. He might yet. There were, supposedly, good slopes in the Bergid, only an hour away from Shejidan—where fools risked their necks, as Tabini put it.