Invader

by C. J. Cherryh

  “There is a rumor,” Finance said, “that humans have built more ships.”

  “I believe I can deny that, nand’ Minister, unless someone besides the paidhi understands that from some tape I haven’t heard.” He said it, and Hanks landed on his mind like a hammer blow. “I ask you, nadiin, please, when you hear such things, make me aware of them, so that I can address them as they deserve in information I give to you. I’ll certainly listen to the tapes with that in mind, nandi, and I thank you for the information.”

  Finance gave a mollified bow of assent, her face entirely expressionless as she leaned back and regarded him under lowered brows.

  Meanwhile the room was swinging around and around, and there was no good trying to request to leave until it stopped—the waves of dizziness when they started having at least a few minutes to run. “Be assured,” he said, “that I’m back in business—a little weak today, but don’t hesitate to send me queries and information at any hour. That’s my job.”

  “The paidhi,” Tabini interjected, “is staying in the Atigeini residence for security reasons. You may direct your phone calls and your messages there. Hanks is not here officially. We have cleared up that matter and are proceeding to clear it up with Mospheira.”

  Some little consternation and curiosity attended on that remark.

  “What of the Treaty?” Judiciary asked. “One human.”

  “They apparently thought I’d died,” Bren said. “And since I’m alive, but injured, it’s possible they left Hanks in place thinking I wasn’t up to my duties. I left Mospheira very rapidly after surgery this morning, and it’s possible they briefed me on a number of things immediately after I came to, but I fear I didn’t retain them. I by no means dispute she’s in violation, but it’s likely only a confusion of signals in a very rapidly evolving situation. While I’m paidhi, I promise you, nadiin, ship or no ship, Mospheira will stay within the Treaty.”

  Triti, in the atevi language. Which they roughly defined as a human concept of association—as humans thought atevi association meant government or confederation, not feeling the instinctual level of it. Bandy “treaty” about in the atevi language in most quarters with any suggestion of it as a paper document and one risked real confusion of human motives.

  “But this ‘sovereignty,”’ Transportation objected.

  “Is a difficult word,” he said. “A rebel word to you, but it doesn’t have such connotations in Mosphei’. It applies to their relations with each other, not with atevi, nand’ Minister. How does it stand now? Has there been much more conversation?”

  “Not between these two individuals,” Defense said, dour-faced, and finding preoccupation in his pen and a paper clip. “We do have numerous exchanges between what we suspect to be lower-level authorities.”

  “Probably correct, nadi.” He felt a sense of panic, sorting wildly through two languages, two psychological, historical realities, trying to make them seamless. “The fact that they’ve turned talk over to subordinates doesn’t mean a settlement or a feud, merely that there’s no agreement substantial enough to enable two leaders to talk.”

  “Two leaders, nadi.” Defense was unwontedly peremptory, even rude in that “nadi,” evidencing disturbance in his voice. “Two, is it?”

  “It’s not certain.” He fought for calm. It wasn’t territory he wanted to explore. “Not at all certain, nand’ Minister. I think they’re trying to see if association exists. I think historically they’ll conclude it does. But if they can’t find it, I can’t imagine that one ship could think it outranks the entire population of Mospheira. At worst, or best, the ship might withdraw to elsewhere in the solar system. I just can’t—can’t—be definitive right now—”

  “The paidhi,” Tabini said, “is very tired, and in pain, nadiin. Thank him for his extraordinary effort on this matter, and let him go to his bed and rest tonight. Will you not, nand’ paidhi?”

  “Aiji-ma, if I had the strength I’d stay, but, yes, I—think that’s wise. The shoulder’s hurting—quite sharply.”

  “Then I’ll turn you back to your escort and wish you good night, paidhi-ji. I ask you to consider your safety extremely important, and extremely threatened, perhaps even from human agencies. Stay to your security, night and day, nand’ paidhi.”

  Why? was the question that leaped up, disturbing his composure in front of a table full of lords and representatives, some of whom might have been in consultation with Hanks. He wished Tabini hadn’t added that—and tumbling to why, he thought: to let the troublemakers in the Association think about the hazard of making associations no ateva understood—like Hanks.

  Clever of the man, Bren thought. One could admire Tabini’s artistry at a distance. One just didn’t want to be the subject of it—and he couldn’t protest to the contrary, or call the aiji a liar. He certainly couldn’t say that Hanks was an innocent in Tabini’s difficulties.

  One just, with the help of the table, struggled to his feet, bowed to the assembled committee chairmen—and lost the coat off his shoulders—another twinge as he tried to save it.

  Banichi quietly intervened to save his dignity, adjusted the coat, and the lords and representatives gave him the courtesy of bows from their seats, two even rising in respect of his performance, when he was less than certain it was credible or creditable.

  “See he rests,” Tabini said to Banichi and Jago. “Straight to bed. No formalities, no excuses.”

  The paidhi had no argument at all with that instruction. He’d believed only giddy minutes ago that he’d controlled that conversation at least enough to hold his own.

  But once out of Tabini’s immediate presence the spell was broken, the excitement ebbed, and adrenaline was shifting from second-to-second performance to the raw fear that he had a human situation on his hands and that he’d given atevi far too much information.

  It hadn’t been a total mistake to agree to Tabini’s requests. Sometimes he’d gotten extraordinary results when Tabini pulled one of his must-talks. Sometimes he’d been able to skate along on dangerously thin ice, maybe giving just a shade more to Tabini’s demands for information than the Department would ever feel comfortable with—

  But, dammit, getting concessions back, too—more cooperation between this aiji and Mospheira in his few years in Shejidan than his predecessor had gotten from Tabini’s father in his whole career. He’d won expansions of the Treaty, he’d increased trade—

  He hadn’t said anything that, by the Treaty, they weren’t entitled to have, or done anything that he hadn’t promised to do when he got back to Shejidan, but he walked the lower hall from the meeting room under the escort of Banichi and Jago, in increasing distress over the tone and tenor of the meeting—definite deterioration in atevi confidence. Definite unease. And maybe justified unease. He needed to talk to Hanks—find out what she’d done and said, and what she understood as the truth.

  Meanwhile Banichi talked to someone on his pocket-com, the device against his ear, and directed him to an express lift he was well familiar with, the one he’d used on his other visits to the third floor. He rode it up with Banichi, seeing the conference room downstairs more vividly than the utilitarian metal around them—reviewing the nuance of remembered dialogue, and agonizing over how, without going back and forth with Mospheira, he was going to straighten out concepts.

  More, there were names in the text, which made it a human Rosetta Stone for atevi grammarians. An extensive text limited to topics on which atevi already knew certain Mosphei’ words—and knowing words didn’t mean knowing the language. Words like loyalty that didn’t quite mean man’chi; and propriety that didn’t quite mean kabiu; and, on the atevi side, triti that, unknown to most humans, didn’t mean treaty, but a homing instinct under fire—damn Hanks and her assumptions.

  Her campaigning for atevi partisans of her own couldn’t be Foreign Office policy. The faction behind Hanks had absolutely no interest in screwing up on that dangerous a level. Hanks wanted the job; Hanks wanted what she�
�d trained for all her life, he understood that—and she was flattered to be making real headway with the likes of lord Geigi and the hard-to-handle fringes of the Association, real proof of her competency, the hell with the university liberals who couldn’t be right about the associational fringe elements …

  Damn, damn, and damn.

  They exited into the upper hall, near the door, walked the hand-loomed carpet runner past extravagant porcelain bouquets in glass cases.

  He ought to call Mospheira and brief someone—tonight, if he could get a call through—if he could keep his wits about him to make a report, no surety at all.

  Worse, he wasn’t sure, in view of Hanks’ being left here, that he dared pick up a phone to make a call or even receive one. He’d started down a course of action he couldn’t backtrack on—and he couldn’t afford to have the upper echelons of the Department pull the rug out from under the Foreign Office or the paidhi with any wait-for-official-decision or a mandated consultation with Hanks.

  The paidhi had damned sure better have authority in the field. Atevi certainly thought he did. The aiji of Shejidan wouldn’t talk to anyone who didn’t have authority to make a decision stick.

  It was a situation you had to stand on both sides of: for the currently serving paidhi, it meant living up to your ears in real-time guesswork.

  And yes, sometimes even that paragon of Departmental rectitude, his predecessor, Wilson-paidhi, hadn’t consulted.

  The hall was a haze of gold carpet patterns and pastel porcelain bouquets and he felt increasingly sick at his stomach. He wanted to be in his bed without fuss, unconscious.

  He wanted to wake up in the morning with an arm that didn’t hurt and with a clear-headed, logical insight into how he was going to keep everything humans and atevi had built together from blowing up in their faces.

  He also wanted, pettishly, to have had more personal time at home, dammit, before they dropped him back into the boiling oil. He’d won his time off: he’d planned to sit for at least a day on his brother’s white-railed porch watching the waves roll in and letting his mind go to the zero-state it longed to achieve—

  Paidhiin had taken fast action before to keep an aiji of Shejidan in power. But they’d never—never—handed over the human fall-back positions in negotiating before the State Department ever got to the negotiations.

  God—he thought suddenly, as that hit, asking himself what he’d done. Or what he’d actually said, or they’d implied. He suddenly couldn’t remember. It was all coming apart in his mind, bleeding into confusion as they reached his door, as Jago keyed through the lock into state-of-the-art security systems which could, if forced, deal death on an intruder in ways that made a human unused to such conveniences feel very, very queasy.

  Tano met them in the foyer. That was a welcome surprise. Tano might have been chasing them since the airport, but he hadn’t actually seen Tano since Malguri, and in the surreal flux of events around him he was ever so glad to see the man in good health. Tano was security the same as Banichi and Jago were: deadly and grim and all of that. But Tano was on his side, on Tabini’s orders, more particularly on Banichi’s, and Banichi ranked very, very high in the Guild of Assassins by all he could figure.

  “Your luggage is safe, nand’ paidhi,” Tano said. “I’ve also set your computer in safekeeping.”

  “Thank you, nadi. I very much regret your difficulties. I hope to be a very quiet resident here and give you absolutely no adventures.”

  Tano took his coat. “One does hope so, nand’ paidhi.” Another, probably real, servant appeared a few steps ahead of the gracious nadi Saidin, captured the coat from Tano and whisked it away under Saidin’s direction, one supposed for cleaning and pressing. “There are messages,” Saidin said, indicating the reception table by the door, where filigree silver message cylinders in daunting abundance waited in a silver basket, along with one paper simply rolled and sealed.

  “The paidhi is exhausted, nadi,” Banichi objected, which was only sense. Bren knew he should let those messages alone, go to bed and sleep the uneasy sleep of the truly morally compromised, without knowing or imagining who would have sent him messages so urgently early in his return: every head of every committee he’d just talked to downstairs, he was certain; plus every atevi official who saw in his accession to this apartment, and his return to Shejidan, the new importance of the paidhiin.

  And possibly ordinary citizens as far as Malguri had recently seen the paidhi on local television and seen the ship in their skies and just wanted to ask: Are we and our children safe in our towns?

  Certain cylinders announced their nature at a cursory glance. And, dammit, he wasn’t constitutionally capable of walking past that table without assuring himself there wasn’t a life-and-death communication in the lot.

  Or word from Mospheira.

  “A moment, nadiin-ji. Just a moment,” he said and, shaky with exhaustion, nipped out of the basket the ones in particular that had caught his eye—the plain, uncylindered one: that usually meant telegrams from Mospheira; then two more, one seal that he feared he recognized, and one he was damned well sure of. Other familiar seals he didn’t need to question: the head of the Space Committee—who hadn’t been at the meeting, and who would have urgent, businesslike and thoroughly reasonable questions to ask the paidhi, such as: Is there still a space program, nand’ paidhi? What do we do?

  And, dead sure, What can we tell the Appropriations Committee?

  One certainly understood that good gentleman’s concern. He saw the seals of Transportation and Trade, too—logical that they had questions for the paidhi: he hoped he’d answered them adequately downstairs.

  But that cylinder of real silver was indeed the seal he’d thought it was, a diamond-centered crest he’d seen not so long ago and, in view of Tabini’s warning, expected.

  Grandmother.

  The aiji-dowager.

  Ilisidi had brought him to Shejidan. Saved his neck. And risked it. Awkward with the cast, he cracked the seal with his thumbnail, slid out the little scroll and pulled it open.

  Nand’ paidhi, it said, in a fine, spidery hand, I swear to your safety. The return of this cylinder on whatever day you feel able will signal your availability for breakfast. You must keep me posted. An old woman can grow so quickly out of touch with the world.

  He really truly wanted to go to bed and not to think about Ilisidi.

  But there remained the two letters, one with his own white ribbon and red wax seal.

  I hope you are aware, it read, that the aiji has resorted to threats of assassination against this office to secure your return to the mainland, while repercussions of your unannounced venture into the hinterlands are still disturbing the capital. In the present crisis, I have taken measures to smooth over the damage in public relations.

  Damn!

  I am continuing to conduct business, to hold discussions with responsible parties, and to send regular reports to the Department as the sole functioning diplomatic officer. That the aiji has offered you his personal hospitality is beside the point. I have not received, nor under the present conditions expect to receive, nor can I accept from you, any instruction whatsoever. I shall continue as paidhi in Shejidan until I receive official recall from the head of the State Department.

  He trusted he kept his face calm. He let the paper roll up and dropped it and his own, damn the woman, message cylinder with the paidhi’s seal back into the basket, before he unrolled the paper he was glad to read, the one he was sure was a telegram from Mospheira—a communication from his family or from Barb, certainly not from the Department, which used other, more secure, means to reach him.

  It said, in Mosphei’-to-atevi phonetic rendering, Sorry I missed your phone call. Bren, I know it’s probably not the time to tell you, but there’s no good time and this mustn’t go on longer. I’ve married Paul. Forgive me. I wish I could build a life on your visits, but I can’t.—Barb.

  He couldn’t believe it. He read it again. Then some
where inside him a little autopilot tick of professionalism reminded him he was under the witness of atevi who had every reason to assume danger to themselves lay in telegrams from Mospheira.

  So he rolled up the scroll. The steadiness of his own hands amazed him. He trusted his expression was calm.

  “Is there a problem, nadi Bren?”

  He hadn’t managed, then. Jago saw through it.

  “A personal one. My—f-f-fiancée—” Atevi language failed him. The word was just suddenly there in his mouth—no other atevi way he could think of to explain a long relationship and emotional investment. “—got tired of waiting. She married someone else.”

  There was silence around him. He supposed they didn’t know what to say. He didn’t either, except, “Hold the rest of the messages, Tano, please, I’ll deal with them in the morning. The aiji-dowager’s—is not that urgent.”

  “Was this expected?” Banichi asked him, not, he was sure, regarding the dowager.

  He shook his head. Then remembered with a little trepidation where he was and to what a dangerous agency he was speaking. “No, nadi. But she’s quite justified.”

  Another small, uncomfortable silence. He supposed he’d passed their professional limits. He didn’t know. Then Jago said harshly, “She was not justified.”

  “Jago-ji,” Banichi said. “Go set up for the night with Security. The paidhi is retiring. The aiji was right. We shouldn’t have delayed.”

  “Yes,” Jago said, and quietly took herself off into the apartments, pocket-com in hand, back stiff, braid swinging, while Banichi waved a hand in the same direction, toward the inner apartments.

  He’d never seen Jago blurt out anything so uncontrolled. But Jago was Banichi’s business, and he was more than willing to take Banichi’s direction and go to bed, where he hoped he was exhausted enough to fall immediately into a sound sleep. He couldn’t take any more physical or emotional jostling.