Invader

by C. J. Cherryh

  Then he picked up his computer, eased the strap onto his good shoulder and made his unhurried way forward, an embarrassingly disreputable figure, he feared, by court standards.

  But he’d gotten here, he hoped with the files he needed to work with, and he hoped to get to the Bu-javid without undue delay and without public notice. If everyone who was supposed to communicate had communicated and if the aiji hadn’t been in nonstop meetings, he should have a car waiting as soon as they moved the ladder up. It thundered, sounding right overhead, and the paidhi prayed that he at least had a car waiting.

  He had to remember, too, that he was now leaving the venue where seats and tables and doorways fit people his size: the stairs out there had a higher rise, and he was, lacking the use of one hand, feeling chill and rather petulantly fragile at the moment.

  “Thank you,” he said to the attendants who opened the aircraft door. The staircase was moving up—not the canopied portable, much less the covered walk: it bumped into contact, rocking the plane, and one attendant set his luggage out on the rainy landing at the top of a shaky, rain-wet, metal ladder.

  No car. It wasn’t going well. Everything had the feeling of haste exceeding planning. Wind-driven mist whipped through the open doorway, and he was ready to go back where it was dry, when a van with the airport security logo whisked from around the nose and braked just short of an epic puddle, so abrupt an arrival his security-conscious nerves had twitched, his whole body poised to fling himself backward.

  “Take care, sir. The steps are higher.”

  “I know. I know, thank you, though. Good flight. Thank you so much. Thank the crew.” He raised a shoulder to keep the computer strap in place and felt a sudden, perilous challenge of balance as he ventured out onto the stairs into the wind-borne spatter of rain. He grabbed the rail, shoulder still canted, struggling not to let the computer strap slip off.

  The van’s side door opened. An armed atevi, a brisk dark giant in the silver-studded black of Bu-javid security and the aiji’s personal guard, exited the van and raced up the steps, making the stairs rattle and shake under atevi muscle.

  “Nadi Bren!” a woman’s voice hailed him, and a bleak day brightened.

  “Jago!”

  “I’ll take that, nadi Bren. Give me your hand.” Two steps below him, Jago stood eye to eye with him. She seized the computer strap on his shoulder, took it from him in relentless courtesy and captured his chilled white hand in her large black one, competency, solidity in a thunderous, wind-blown world. He had no doubt at all Jago could catch him if he slipped—no doubt that she could carry him down the steps in one arm if she had to.

  And on his tottery, rain-blasted way down the ladder, he was not at all surprised, having encountered Jago, to see Banichi exit the van more slowly to welcome them.

  He was glad it was them. God, he was relieved—

  He was so relieved he had a dizzy spell, forgot the scale of the next step, and if Jago hadn’t had an instant and solid grip under his good arm he’d have gone down for sure.

  “Careful,” she said, hauling him back to balance. “Careful, Bren-ji, the steps are slick.”

  Slick. Lightning flashed overhead, whiting out detail, glancing off the puddle. He reached the bottom rubber-legged as Banichi stepped out of the way for him and for Jago, who helped him into the van and climbed in after.

  Banichi brought up the rear, swung up and in and slammed the door, sealing out the rain and the thunder. Like Jago, black leather and silver studs, black skin, black hair, gold eyes, Banichi fell into the available door-side seat, saving his leg from flexing, Bren didn’t fail to note, as he settled next to the far window.

  “Go,” Jago said to the driver.

  “My luggage,” Bren protested as the van jerked into motion.

  “Tano will bring it. There’s a second van.”

  Tano was another familiar name, a man he was exceedingly glad to know was alive.

  “Algini?” he asked, meaning Tano’s partner.

  “Malguri Hospital,” Banichi said. “How are you, Bren-ji?”

  Far better than he’d thought. People were alive that he’d feared dead.

  But other people, good people, had died for mistaken, stupid reasons.

  “Is there word—” His voice cracked as he leaned back against the seat. “Is there word from Malguri? From Djinana? Are they all right?”

  “One can inquire,” Jago said.

  He hadn’t remotely realized he was so shaky. Maybe it was the sudden feeling of safety. Maybe it was the haste he’d been in back on Mospheira to gather everything he needed. His mind wandered back into the web of atevi proprieties, lost in the mindset that didn’t allow Banichi or Jago the simple opportunity to inquire about—

  Atevi didn’t have friends. God, God, wipe the word from his mind. Twenty-four hours across the strait and he was thinking in Mosphei’, making psychological slips like that, a dim-witted slide toward what was human, when he was no longer in human territory.

  The van swerved around a corner, and they all leaned. It was summer in Shejidan, but they seemed to have the heater on, all the same, because the clammy chill was gone. He leaned his head back on the seat, blinked his stinging eyes and asked, as the straightening of the course rolled his head toward Banichi, “Are we taking the subway out, or what?”

  “Yes,” Banichi told him.

  Banichi hadn’t come up the ramp after him.

  “The leg, Banichi?”

  “No detriment, nand’ paidhi. I assure you.”

  To his efficiency, Banichi meant. Back on mainland soil and he’d assigned Jago a diplomatically touchy inter-staff inquiry and insulted Banichi’s judgment and competency. He didn’t know how he could improve on it.

  “Ignore my stupid questions,” he said. “Drugs. Just got out of hospital. I took a painkiller. I shouldn’t have.”

  “How did the surgery go?” Jago asked.

  He tried to remember, “I forgot to ask,” he admitted, and didn’t know why he hadn’t, except that in some convoluted, drug-hazed fashion he’d taken for granted he was going to have a shoulder that worked. He hoped so.

  Hell, it felt as if he’d picked up where he’d left his life yesterday—was it yesterday?—and everything about Mospheira was a passing dream. It felt good, it felt safe to be back with these two. He wasn’t tracking outstandingly well on anything at the moment, except that between these two individuals he felt he could handle anything.

  If these two were here, he knew that Tabini, none other, had sent them.

  The van’s tires made a wet sound on the airport pavement. He let his eyes shut. He could let down his propriety with these two, who’d lived intimately with him, who’d cared for him when he was far less than self-possessed—and he’d know even blind that he was in Shejidan, not Mospheira. He knew by the smells of rain-wet leather and the warmth of atevi bodies, the slight scent that attended them, which might be perfume, or might be natural—it was an odd thing that he’d never quite questioned it, but it was pleasant and familiar, in the way old rooms and accustomed places were comfortable to find.

  The van nosed down an incline, and he blinked a look at his surroundings, knowing where they were before he used his eyes: the ramp down into the utilitarian concrete of the restricted underground terminal. The aiji used it—the aiji and others whose safety and privacy the government wanted to guarantee.

  He’d discovered a comfortable position in which to sit, good shoulder against the van wall. He truly, truly didn’t want to move right now.

  “I trust,” he said, shutting his eyes again, “that there’ll be a chance for me to rest, nadiin. I really, really hope to rest a while before I have to think or do anything truly critical.”

  Jago’s fingers brushed his shoulder. “Bren-ji, we can carry you to the car if you wish.”

  The van braked to a halt. “No,” he said, and remembering that these two afforded themselves no weakness and rarely a sign of pain, he opened his eyes and tried to d
rag himself back to the gray concrete and echoing world. “I’ll manage, thank you, nadiin, but, please, let’s just wait for my luggage. I have every confidence in Tano. But it’s only a single case. It has my medical records.”

  “We’ve orders, nadi,” Banichi said.

  Tabini’s orders. No question. No dawdling even in a secure area. Possibly there had been some filing of Intent against his life, but most likely it was simply Tabini’s desire to have the paidhi in place, under a guard he trusted, and to have one more ragged-edged problem off his mind.

  Banichi opened the door and stepped down to the pavement, Jago got out after, taking the computer, and Bren edged across the seat and stepped down with less assurance, into their competent and watchful care.

  The subway had its own peculiar atmosphere: oil, cold concrete and echoes of machinery and voices—like any station in the city system, like any in the continent-spanning rail that linked to the city subway; a connection which argued there could be a small risk of some security breach, he supposed, but no one came into this station without a security clearance, not the baggage handlers, not the workmen: cars didn’t stop here.

  Which meant there was no burning reason now, in his unregarded and probably uninformed opinion, that the paidhi couldn’t stand about for half a minute and wait for his luggage—but considering the wobble in his knees and the disorientation that came buzzing through his brain with the white noise of the echoing space, he let himself be moved along the trackside at Banichi’s best limping pace.

  A pair of Bu-javid guards, standing outside on the platform, opened the door of the car—seemingly a freight-carrier—that waited for them. They were guards he didn’t know, but clearly Banichi did, sufficiently that Banichi sent Jago into the car for no more than a cursory look before letting Bren inside.

  It was residential-style furnishing inside the car, false windows inside curtained in red velvet. It was the aiji’s own traveling salon, plush appointments, the whole affair in muted reds and beige, a complete galley, soft chairs—Bren let himself down in one that wouldn’t swallow him in its cushions, and Jago, setting the computer down, went immediately to open the galley, asking him did he want fruit juice?

  “Tea, nadi, if you please.” He still felt chilled, and his ears had felt stuffed with wool since the change in altitude. Tea sounded good. Alkaloids that atevi metabolisms didn’t mind at all in ordinary doses were especially common in herbal teas and concentrated in some atevi liquor, a fact he’d proved the hard way: but Banichi’s junior partner wouldn’t make mistakes like that with her charge. He shut his eyes in complete confidence and only opened them when Jago gently announced the tea was ready, the train was about to couple the car on, and would he care for a cup now?

  He would. He took the offered cup in his hand, as Banichi, having made it aboard, shut the outside door and went on talking to someone, doubtless official, on his pocket-com.

  Jago cradled her cup against the gentle bump as the coupling engaged. “We’re a three-car train,” Jago said, settling opposite him.

  “Tano’s made it on,” Banichi said as he came up and joined them. “Station security wouldn’t let him in this car. I did point out he’s in the same service, little that penetrates the minds in charge.”

  Bren didn’t worry that much about his luggage at the moment. Climbing up the high step to the car had waked up the pain in his shoulder.

  But after half a cup of tea, and with the train approaching the terminal in the Bu-javid’s lower levels, he recovered a wistful hope of homecoming, his own bed—if security afforded him that favor.

  “Do you think, nadiin, that I’ll possibly have my garden apartment back?”

  “No,” Banichi said. “I fear not. I’ll inquire. But it’s a fine view of the mountains, where you’re going.”

  “The mountains.” He was dismayed. “The upper floor?—Or a hotel?”

  “A very fine accommodation. A staunch partisan has made you her personal guest, openly preferring the aiji’s apartment for the session.”

  A staunch partisan. Tabini-aiji’s staunch partisan. Tabini’s apartment.

  The train began braking. Jago extended her hand for the cup.

  Damiri?

  Tabini’s hitherto clandestine lover? Of the Atigeini opposition?

  My God. Damiri had declared herself. Her relatives were going to riot in the streets.

  And a human for Tabini’s next-door neighbor, even temporarily, lodged in an area of the Bu-javid only the highest and most ancient lords of the Association attained?

  A human didn’t belong there. Not there—and certainly not in a noble and respectable lady’s private quarters. There was bound to be gossip. Coarse jokes. Detriment to the lady and the lady’s family, whose regional association had openly opposed Tabini’s policies from the day of his accession as aiji-major.

  Slipping indeed. He must have let his dismay reach his face: Banichi said, as the brakes squealed, “Tabini wants you alive at any cost, nand’ paidhi. Things are very delicate. The lady has made her wager on Tabini, and on Tabini’s resourcefulness, with the dice still falling.”

  Baji-naji. Fortune and chance, twin powers of atevi belief, intervenors in the rigid tyranny of numbers.

  The car came to rest.

  The doors opened. Banichi was easily on his feet, offering a hand. Bren moved more slowly, promising himself that in just a little while he could have a bed, a place to lie still and let his head quit buzzing.

  Jago gathered up his computer. “I’ll manage it, Bren-ji. Take care for yourself. Please don’t fall.”

  “I assure you,” he murmured, and followed Banichi’s lead to the door, down again, off the steps, into what he assumed was tight security—at least as tight as afforded no chance of meetings.

  “Bren Cameron,” a voice echoed out, a female voice, sharp, human and angry.

  “Deana?” Deana Hanks didn’t belong in the equation. She’d been out of communication, the fogged brain added back in; he’d asked that her authorizations be pulled by the Foreign Office, and he’d assumed—assumed she’d gone home. His successor had no legitimate business on the mainland.

  Had she?

  Things had moved too fast today and she was late for the airport. Mad, he was sure. Technically she should have met him at the airport, giving the plane just enough time to fuel and take on cargo, and be airborne inside an hour.

  All of which was at the rear of his mind as he extended a friendly left hand, glad she was all right. “This is a surprise. Thank you for the backup.”

  “Thank you, hell!”

  One didn’t take a hostile tone around atevi. Guards’ hands twitched toward pockets, inside coats, both her security, and his.

  “Hata-mai,” he said quickly, It’s all right, and lapsed back into the atevi language. “Deana, nadi, may we be a little softer, please? I’m sure the plane will wait for you.”

  “Softer, is it?” She was a dark-haired woman, pale-skinned, flushed about the face most times that he ever dealt with her. She wore an atevi-style coat and had her hair in the court braid, the same as he did. Her atevi escort made an anxious wall behind her. “Softer? Is the government caving in to blackmail now? Is this the best answer they could come up with? They deliver ultimatums and we jump?”

  “Nadi, if you please—”

  “I’ll the hell speak Mosphei’, thank you. I want a report. I want to know where you were, I want to know what you were doing, I want to know who you were talking to and what you reported to whom, and I’ll talk in the office, this afternoon.”

  It must be the pain pill. He wasn’t tracking that well. Maybe he’d personally affronted the woman—not hard, considering Deana’s temper, but he was determined she be on that outbound plane. Two humans weren’t ever supposed posed to be this side of the strait at the same time. “We can settle this by fax. I’ll brief you. But you’ve got a flight to catch.”

  “Oh, of course, of course I have. —I haven’t any recall order, Mr. Cameron.
Of course, without communications, there’s damned little I do hear but court gossip. —And threats against this office. I want written orders. I take it you brought them with you.”

  “I—don’t think they’ve ever been required.”

  “Nadi Bren,” Jago said. “Please. Let’s be moving.”

  “You take orders, nadi,” Hanks snapped. “This is a matter inside our office, no local concern.”

  “Ms. Hanks.” She’d insulted Jago. That was the last straw. “You’re not talking to building security, if you haven’t noticed the braid. And if you want an order, you’ve got an order. You’re relieved of duty, your codes are invalid, your presence is no longer required. Get on that plane.”

  “Get me an order from Mospheira. I don’t take it from you. And I’ve received nothing from Foreign Affairs except the advisement you were going back to Mospheira on a medical.”

  “Well, clearly I’m back.”

  “Not officially, Mr. Cameron. Not to me.”

  “I suggest, nadiin,” Banichi said, moving between, and addressing Hanks’ guards, “that you take this woman out of Bren-paidhi’s way or face administrative procedures. Or mine. You are in error, nadiin, don’t make more of it—I advise you.”

  There was threat in the air. All of a sudden Bren sensed resistance from Hanks’ escort, aggression from Banichi—who surely had authority. He felt his heart speed, which the pain pill didn’t want to have happen.

  But Hanks’ escort moved to take her out of his path—

  He didn’t know how it happened—suddenly he had a maneuvering wall of atevi between him and the world, and no one even hit him, as far as he realized, but he felt a painful jolt as he stumbled against the concrete station wall. He cradled his casted arm out of the way as an ateva overshadowed him and seized his good arm.