Convergence

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Son of mine, . . .”

  “I shall do it,” he said. His father was always telling him being aiji often consisted in doing things one had far rather not be doing, and he only wished he could take a slow boat trip toward this obligation. “I shall, honored Father. May my aishid see the guest list?”

  “Your aishid. Do you expect daggers?”

  “I wish to learn what I can, honored Father, about their opinions. And if senior Guild will talk to them, I would like to know these people.”

  “We are getting clever.”

  “I know you will know. Your bodyguard reports to you. So should not I ask?”

  “Yes,” his father said. “Yes, you should. Well asked. But these are not people easily convinced of anything. Do not press them too hard with reason. Reason is not among their motives.”

  He thought about that, and thought it did explain several disagreeable people he knew, none of whom would be at mani’s table.

  “Are the dinners the same night?” he asked, hoping to the contrary.

  “Yes. They are deliberately opposed. Strategically opposed. We get the honor. Our invitation is the higher one. But your great-grandmother’s guests are not the sort to think they are second in our esteem.”

  Politics, politics. He restrained a second sigh, but he understood what was going on, which was better than he had been two years ago.

  “One understands,” he said. “I do understand, honored Father. I shall do my best.”

  “Yes,” his father said, not giving him good lad or anything patronizing. Just yes. Which was some sort of a reward.

  So he missed Najida. He missed nand’ Toby and Barb-daja. And he missed mani’s party with Uncle Tatiseigi, and got—

  Oh, he imagined the head of the list of lords and ladies. Darbin. He fairly well imagined it.

  But Father had given him respect. That was something.

  And he would find out the names and find out things about them, what they deemed important and what they disparaged, and he might find a way to persuade them that there was not a massive conspiracy of deception in the heavens, and that the ship was not secretly running everything and that Lord Geigi was honest and loyal, and had been on his way to setting his father back in power even before he and mani and nand’ Bren had come back from a place some of these folk believed had never existed.

  These people were not responsible for overthrowing his father in Murini’s conspiracy, but they had not been of great help restoring the government either. And he did not know why his father even cared about these people.

  That was the question he wished he had asked when he took his leave and walked back toward his suite. Somewhere there was a reason, and it might just be keeping these people as quiet as possible, or it might be there was something his father wanted to do that was so narrow a vote these people mattered.

  There was nothing his father currently wanted to do that he knew about. But there could be.

  Maybe it was to do with the Reunioners, and his guests, and Father’s willingness to land cargoes on the mainland, and to have Reunioner passengers landing on atevi shuttles. That could well stir up some legislators, but these people were going to be stirred up no matter what.

  Was it just that the aishidi’tat had taken so many heavy blows that they had to pay attention to these districts—because certainly there was going to be some disturbance.

  He understood some things he had not understood two and three years ago, but there were other things just dark to him.

  • • •

  Boji, in his cage, was quite sure anyone who left the apartment was coming back with eggs for him. Cajeiri opened the door to his suite, and Boji immediately set up one of those fusses, leaping about and rattling his big cage, spilling some of his water dish.

  “Hush!” he said, thumping on the cage wall. “Boji! Behave! Did you think I had gone away for good? Come here.”

  Boji screeched, the sort of sound that could wake his sister and make itself heard in Father’s office.

  “Hush! Scoundrel! You were getting better before I left!”

  Liedi came in from the back rooms with an egg—probably, he said to himself, Boji had gotten eggs every time he had pitched a fit all the time they had been gone, since his orders had been to keep Boji quiet and not let him wake Seimei.

  He had remarked last night that Boji was quite happily plump—he had thought it lack of exercise.

  Boji took his egg, pierced it, began quite happily sucking on it.

  “I think when he does this,” he said, “we are going to have to find another answer.”

  “We have tried, nandi,” Liedi said.

  He contemplated the little thief, thinking how Boji had been his idea, a very inconvenient idea, that his parents had tolerated, and that had more than once complicated things, and been, over all, a comfort to his loneliness, but a trial to the household.

  Then his guests had come down to the world, and with prospect of having them resident on Mospheira—he was not as lonely as he had been.

  So did he feel less attachment to Boji?

  Boji had man’chi of a sort, to him, and depended on him, and he could not just send Boji off to some forest to try to live—Boji probably had no idea how to get an egg that did not come from a kitchen, so he could not even live as tame parid’ji had lived for thousands of years, finding nests for their masters, and getting an egg for a reward.

  He knew now his notion of having Boji sit on his shoulder would never work. It was not the sort of adornment one had, with court clothes. And Boji loose in an apartment was a disaster.

  Liedi was just looking at him, having offered his one excuse for an inexcusable creature.

  “I think he has become a problem in the household,” he said. “You have far more important things to do than seeing to this rascal. Are you attached to him?”

  “We do not mind,” Liedi said, who regrettably had several scars from Boji’s teeth, and whose traveling about with him had been in the baggage car, seeing that Boji did not panic. Liedi and Eisi both had been more than understanding.

  “He is not a toy and I am not a child, not so much, any longer. He deserves better than a cage he cannot climb in and you deserve better than riding in the baggage car with a spoiled parid’ja. I wish I might find a place for him, but he is too bright for his own good and too stupid to find eggs in the wild. Ask about, Liedi-ji. Talk to Eisi. See if anywhere in the Bujavid anyone has an answer for him. I should miss him, but I should not like to see him getting fat and miserable in a cage without enough room for him.”

  “Nandi.” Liedi gave a little bow. “One will ask.”

  “I am amenable to keeping him,” he said, “if only there were a place. But he needs trees, and he needs eggs. He is a thief. And he bites.”

  “We shall make every effort,” Liedi said, without, one thought, too much regret in the proposition.

  Boji had finished his egg, and dropped the shells to the bottom of the cage, where they would have to be collected, to another fuss as the tray was pulled. He did make a mess. He was a problem.

  He had very intelligent eyes, and he looked back like a person. He caught moods, and hung on the side of his cage, staring back very solemnly.

  “I think you would like to be free,” he said—silly thing, to be talking to a creature. But he did, sometimes. He had, on lonely occasions. “But I think you would also like to be safe, and fed.”

  Nothing but a solemn stare.

  “I took responsibility for you, and I have no idea why, now, I should send you away. But I should. I think I should.”

  Boji chittered at him, still with that quizzical stare.

  “No, I have not another egg. Fat creature. You need trees. Tall ones.”

  He had no idea why he had suddenly made that change of mind—except Boji was so silly a creature, and so
easily hurt.

  He had been lonely, he had found associates on the ship, he had established ties to them and he wanted them back. He had not, when he had met them, been mature enough to really see how complicated it was. He had not cared about consequences. He had only just learned about consequences, in the real sense—he’d only begun to understand how far they could reach, and how long they could go on . . . much, much more complicated than he had thought, much more complicated than he had known. He had filled the empty spot with his aishid, with Boji, with his patient servants. And he was not alone, but he was still lonely. His aishid and his servants took care of him—and he took care of Boji, some of the time—being a child. Being foolish, and not understanding really how to take care of Boji.

  He’d been a child when he’d left Earth for the first time. Travel to another sun? Of course. The ship did that. Talk to an alien species? Oh, of course. He could figure it out. Associate with humans? That could not be different than dealing with nand’ Bren. Could it?

  Young, he said to himself. Young. Foolish.

  He’d come back from this trip with a sense of things much, much wider than he had realized. So many things looked scarily different now. They had no idea when the kyo might come back, and with what changes of their own. They had no idea what was out there around other stars. He had no idea how Reunioners would mix with Mospheirans, but in their situation, they had to. He had no idea how the whole world would get along in years to come. Or what would happen when they did build an atevi starship, and where they would go and what they would do.

  Most of all he had no idea what would happen to Irene and Gene, Artur and Bjorn.

  He had left them in a better situation, this visit. At least they would be coming down to the world to live. His human associates could fend for themselves on Mospheira. And would. He knew that Mospheira could be a scary place, a place as dangerous as the Marid on occasion: he knew he had singled them out by his association with them, and they would have no bodyguard with them. But that was what nand’ Bren was trying to set up, their coming down to Earth, among other things. And definitely—their safety.

  They would be living so close, and always out of reach. They would grow up human. That was right. That was proper. That was what would satisfy them. They would run risks he could not predict. And that was where they could be human.

  Boji was no different in essence than any parid’ja in the wild, but he had had a young silly boy try to make him a sort of safe associate, which had served the boy for a while, but now the boy had grown past reaching out, and begun to think how to protect his associates, when there was no way to do that.

  He had caged Boji. He kept him in, he kept him safe. But it was such a small cage. And Boji needed to be what he was, too.

  He had dreamed about nand’ Bren on his boat last night. He had almost felt the sea under him. It was a favorite dream, being on the boat.

  But he had an uneasy feeling, a question where the boat was going, and what nand’ Bren was going to do, and what it would mean to his associates and all the world—about which he could do very, very little at the moment—

  Except sit at table with people who hated the very idea of association with outsiders, and smile, and try to make them understand something about the universe.

  • • •

  He sat down and he thought about it—how he could talk to these people he had to deal with and get them to see what he had seen, and to understand that the kyo were indeed a danger, but also that they could be allies, too.

  He called Antaro in, of his aishid.

  “My father is giving a dinner tomorrow night and wants me to attend. My father says we may see the guest list. Ask particulars on all the people.” That was how mani would say it: particulars covered everything they possibly could get. “And ask to borrow the clan book.”

  “Yes,” Antaro said, and immediately left.

  When Antaro came back, this time with her brother Jegari, she had a sheet of paper, the requested list. He took it, he read it, and he knew some of them by reputation, and yes, Darbin, the one he detested, was on the list. He took the sheet and he went to his office, where he had a wall map, with pins in it to denote clans and territories where he had associates.

  Could he put a pin on the very edge, for a ship traveling outbound from the solar system?

  Or several more, along the top, for people up on the station, pins for his associates and their parents?

  In not so very long, he would have a place on the map to put them, pins on Mospheira, on solid ground, where horizons bent around the world—instead of up.

  Unfortunately, he had no pins of help in the dinner situation, not even acquaintances in the regions these people ruled. The clans on the guest list were scattered mostly toward the mountains, the continental divide, and to the northwest, where he had no pins.

  Well, except Lucasi and Veijico, whose clan was a little more to the north. He actually had one lonely pin up there—but Lucasi and Veijico did not maintain close ties with their own clan, and had no inclination to do so.

  They were all little clans, these troublesome dinner guests, but together they represented a large area of the mountain region, and with their votes all together, they could pad out the conservative vote if it was close, tipping the balance against a bill. They were some of them clans with no real master clan, just a local association of families tucked in little valleys. Such areas had legislators who, when they did come to Shejidan, would usually just stand up and cast a no vote on just about everything unless somebody traded them something for it. There was flooding in the west? They thought the west should pay for it, when, of course, the west could not pay for it, because their houses were flooded. That was the reason there was an aishidi’tat, so that they all could pay a little and help people when they needed it. Well, that, and being sure the guilds did what they should, and that districts were fair to each other.

  But these sixteen almost-clans and two real ones from the mountain districts were not interested in anything outside their own areas and kinships—except to vote against it.

  They were also all from the old traditional areas. So was mani, but these people generally were not fond of mani, because along with the old traditions, there were old feuds, and one of those feuds involved the dividing line between the west and the east, right up at the top of those mountains. These people absolutely believed in the numbers and in omens. They practiced kabiu in everything. And one had to use proper language and keep everything fortunate, with no missteps. These clans were not happy with having the space station, but they certainly did not like sharing it with humans now that they had it. They wanted their own starship, because humans had one, but they would not want to pay for it.

  And they would not at all approve of nand’ Bren, and certainly would not approve of his own young associates, so he ought not to mention them, either, or get into anything that he wished they would understand. No. They had rather carry on an argument with mani, because Easterners were wicked.

  It was a big map, covering a whole section of the office wall. It had always been one of his favorite things. He had been so proud to put pins on it. But they had gotten harder to acquire, and they had proven all too easy to lose.

  When he had first come back to Shejidan from space, when Father had retaken the government, his map had once had a pin for practically everyone he had ever dealt with, and the north had held a cluster of them, a place where he could claim his mother’s Ajuri clan and Great-uncle’s Atageini clan and all their subclans and townships, right along with his father’s Taibeni. Now all he had was the Atageini association and the Taibeni, who had stopped being at war with each other for his sake—a good thing.

  But because of a great-uncle of his, Shishogi, who had been in the Assassins’ Guild and in charge of Assignments, he had had to pull out every pin up there but the Taibeni and the Atageini, and now there were little
pits where Ajuri and its subclans had been, a gap between Atageini, where Great-uncle Tatiseigi was lord, and his several pins in Dur, over on the coast.

  Grandfather, mother’s father, lord of Ajuri, had tried to break out of that situation—or at least he hoped that Grandfather had been on his way to contact Great-uncle Tatiseigi when he had been assassinated. And he was relatively sure that it was Shishogi who had done in Grandfather, and not his mother, his father, or Great-uncle Tatiseigi.

  Shishogi was dead now. Mani and nand’ Bren had taken him down. But it was just a mess up there, and Ajuri still had no lord until Ajuri came up with a candidate and actually not until Father approved it. He had Great-aunt Geidaro left in Ajuri. He had met her. And second-cousin Meishi. But Geidaro was no one he would trust, and Meishi was, well, she was nice enough, even kind, but she was not the sort to hold a pin. As an ally—she was safe in Ajuri only because she was harmless.

  It was just a mess up there . . . with another great gap in his pins to the east of Atageini, but that area of the map was not scarred with pinholes. He had never had associates in that region—Kadagidi and all its subclans.

  Dinner tomorrow night he was sure would not add any pins—no associations among those people in the mountain districts. He certainly had pins on the other side of the mountains, in the East, where mani had her estate, and several more besides, but the people coming to dinner tonight would think mani was a particular problem, because she was an Easterner, from the other side of the mountains. And Easterners were foreigners.

  Father wanted him to be there, he suspected, because he was just back from the space station and the meeting with the kyo and all that strangeness was in the news and upsetting to these people—who sometimes sold their votes, and who were certainly going to be flattered by an invitation and a private hearing.

  He had no idea what sort of thing was up for a narrow vote. He had not even thought to ask Father why—but on another level, it hardly mattered. Father asked. He had to do it, and do it with good grace.