Foreigner

by C. J. Cherryh

  Worrisome thoughts that said that attacking the paidhi-aiji, the supposedly inoffensive, neutral and discreetly silent paidhi-aiji … was, if not a product of lunacy, a premeditated attack on some sort of system, meaning any point of what was.

  He tried to make himself the most apolitical, quiet presence in Tabini’s court. He pursued no contact with the political process except sitting silently in court or in the corner of some technological or sociological impact council—and occasionally, very occasionally presenting a paper. Having public attention called to him as Tabini had just done … was contrary to all the established policy of his office.

  He wished Tabini hadn’t made his filing of Intent—but clearly Tabini had had to do something severe about the invasion of the Bu-javid, most particularly the employer of the assassin’s failure to file feud before doing it.

  No matter that assassination was legal and accepted—you didn’t, in atevi terms, proceed without filing, you didn’t proceed without license, and you didn’t order wholesale bloodbaths. You removed the minimal individual that would solve a problem. Biichi-gi, the atevi called it. Humans translated it … ‘finesse.’

  Finesse was certainly what the attempt lacked—give or take the would-be assassin hadn’t expected the paidhi to have a gun that humans weren’t supposed to have, this side of the Mospheira straits.

  A gun that Tabini had given him very recently.

  And Banichi and Jago insisted they couldn’t find a clue.

  Damned disturbing.

  Attack on some system? The paidhi-aiji might find himself identified as belonging to any number of systems … like being human, like being the paidhi-aiji at all, like advising the aiji that the rail system was, for long-range ecological considerations, better than highway transport … but who ever absolutely knew the reason or the offense, but the party who’d decided to ‘finesse’ a matter?

  The paidhi-aiji hadn’t historically been a target. Personally, his whole tenure had been the collection of words, the maintenance of the dictionary, the observation and reporting of social change. The advice he gave Tabini was far from solely his idea: everything he did and said came from hundreds of experts and advisers on Mospheira, telling him in detail what to say, what to offer, what to admit to—so finessing him out of the picture might send a certain message of displeasure with humans, but it would hardly hasten highways into existence.

  Tabini had felt something in the wind, and armed him.

  And he hadn’t reported that fact to Mospheira, second point to consider: Tabini had asked him not to tell anyone about the gun, he had always respected certain few private exchanges between himself and the aiji, and he had extended that discretion to keeping it out of his official reports. He’d worried about it, but Tabini’s confidences had flattered him, personally and professionally—there at the hunting lodge, in Taiben, where all kinds of court rules were suspended and everyone was on holiday. Marksmanship was an atevi sport, an atevi passion—and Tabini, a champion marksman with a pistol, had, apparently on whim, violated a specific Treaty provision to provide the paidhi, as had seemed then, a rare week of personal closeness with him, a rare gesture of—if not friendship, at least as close as atevi came, an abrogation of all the formalities that surrounded and constrained him and Tabini alike.

  It had immensely increased his status in the eyes of certain staff. Tabini had seemed pleased that he took to the lessons, and giving him the gun as a present had seemed a moment of extravagant rebellion. Tabini had insisted he ‘keep it close,’ while his mind racketed wildly between the absolute, unprecedented, and possibly policy-changing warmth of Tabini’s gesture toward a human, and an immediate guilty panic considering his official position and his obligation to report to his own superiors.

  He’d immediately worried what he was going to do with it on the plane home, and how or if he was going to dispose of it—or report it, when it might be a test Tabini posed him, to see if he had a personal dimension, or personal discretion, in the rules his superiors imposed on him.

  And then, after he was safely on the plane home, the gun and the ammunition a terrifying secret in the personal bag at his feet, he had sat watching the landscape pass and adding up how tight security had gotten around Tabini in the last few weeks.

  Then he’d gotten scared. Then he’d known he had gotten himself into something he didn’t know how to get out of—that he ought to report, and didn’t, because nobody on Mospheira could read the situation in Tabini’s court the way he could on a realtime basis. He knew that some danger might be in the offing, but his assessment of the situation might not have critical bits of data, and he didn’t want orders from his superiors until he could figure out what the undercurrents were in the capital.

  That was why he had put the gun under the mattress, which his servants didn’t ordinarily disturb, rather than hiding it in the drawers, which they sometimes did rearrange.

  That was why, when a shadow came through his bedroom door, he hadn’t wasted a second going after it and not a second more in firing. He’d lived in the Bu-javid long enough to know at a very basic level that atevi didn’t walk through people’s doors uninvited, not in a society where everyone was armed and assassination was legal. The assassin had surely been confident the paidhi wouldn’t have a weapon—and gotten the surprise of his life.

  If it hadn’t been a trial designed to catch him with the gun. Which didn’t say why—

  He was woolgathering. They were proposing a vote next meeting. He had lost the minister’s last remarks. If the paidhi let something slip unchallenged through the council, he could end up losing a point two hundred years of his predecessors had battled to hold on to. There were points past which even Tabini couldn’t undo a council recommendation—points past which Tabini wouldn’t undertake a fight that might not be in Tabini’s interest, once he’d set Tabini in a convenient position to deny his advice, Tabini being, understandably, on the atevi side of any questionable call.

  “I’ll want a transcript,” he said, as the meeting broke up, and gathered a roomful of shocked stares.

  Which probably alarmed everyone unnecessarily—they might take his glum mood for anger and the postponement and request for a transcript as a forewarning that the paidhi was disposed to veto.

  And against what interest? He saw the frown gather on the minister’s face, wondering if the paidhi was taking a position they didn’t understand—and confusion wasn’t a good thing to generate in an ateva. Action bred action. He had enough troubles without scaring anyone needlessly.

  The Minister of Works could even conclude he blamed someone in his office for an attack that was surely reported coast to coast of the continent by now, in which case the minister and his interests might think they should protect themselves, or secure themselves allies they believed he would fear.

  Say, I wasn’t listening during the speech? Insult the gentle and long-winded Minister of Works directly in the sorest point of his vanity? Insult the entire council, as if their business bored him?

  Damn, damn, a little disturbance in atevi affairs led to so much consequence. Moving at all was so cursed delicate. And they didn’t understand people who let every passing emotion show on their faces.

  He took his computer. He walked out into the hall, remembering to bow and be polite to the atevi he might have distressed.

  Jago was at his elbow instantly, prim Jago, not so tall as the atevi around her, but purposeful, deliberate, dangerous in a degree that had to make everyone around him reassess the position he held and the resources he had.

  Resources the aiji had, more to the point, if, a moment ago, they had entertained any uneasiness about him.

  There was another turn of atevi thinking—that said that if a person had power like that, and hadn’t used it, he wouldn’t do so as long as the status quo maintained itself intact.

  “Any findings?” he asked Jago, when they had a space of the hall to themselves.

  “We’re watching,” Jago said. “That’
s all. The trail’s cold.” “Mospheira would be safer for me.”

  “But Tabini needs you.”

  “Banichi said so. For what? I’ve no advisements to give him. I’ve been handed no inquiry that I’ve heard of, unless something turns up in the energy transcript. I’m sorry. My mind hasn’t been on business.”

  “Get some sleep tonight.”

  With death-traps at both doors. He had nothing to say to that suggestion. He took the turn toward the post office to pick up his mail, hoping for something pleasant. A letter from home. Magazines, pictures to look at that had human faces, articles that depended on human language and human logic, for a few hours after supper to let go of thoughts that were going to haunt his sleep a second night. It was one of those days he wanted to tell Barb to get on the plane, fly in here, just twenty-four human hours. …

  With lethal wires on his bedroom doors?

  He took out his mail-slot key, he reached for the door, and Jago caught his arm. “The attendant can get it.”

  From behind the wall, she meant—because someone was trying to kill him, and Jago didn’t want him reaching into the box after the mail.

  “That’s extreme,” he said.

  “So might your enemies be.”

  “I thought the word was finesse. Blowing up a mail slot?”

  “Or inserting a needle in a piece of mail.” She took his key and pocketed it. “The paidhi’s mail, nadi-ji.”

  The attendant went. And came back.

  “Nothing,” the attendant said.

  “There’s always something,” Bren said. “Forgive my persistence, nadi, but my mailbox is never empty. It’s never in my tenure here been empty. Please be sure.”

  “I couldn’t mistake you, nand’ paidhi.” The attendant spread his hands. “I’ve never seen the box empty either. Perhaps there’s holiday.”

  “Not on any recent date.”

  “Perhaps someone picked it up for you.”

  “Not by my authorization.”

  “I’m sorry, nand’ paidhi. There’s just nothing there.”

  “Thank you.” He bowed, there being nothing else to say, and nowhere else to look. “Thank you for your trouble.” And quietly to Jago, in perplexity and distress: “Someone’s been at my mail.”

  “Banichi probably picked it up.”

  “It’s very kind of him to take the trouble, Jago, but I can pick up my mail.”

  “Perhaps he thought to save you bother.”

  He sighed and shook his head, and walked away, Jago right with him, from the first step down the hall. “His office, do you think?”

  “I don’t think he’s there. He said something about a meeting.”

  “He’s taken my mail to a meeting.”

  “Possibly, nadi Bren.”

  Maybe Banichi would bring it to the room. Then he could read himself to sleep, or write letters, before he forgot human language. Failing that, maybe there’d be a machimi play on television. A little revenge, a little humor, light entertainment.

  They took the back halls to reach the main lower corridor, walked to his room. He used his key—opened the door and saw his bed relocated to the other end of the room. The television was sitting where his bed had been. Everything felt wrong-handed.

  He avoided the downed wire, dead though it was supposed to be. Jago stepped over it too, and went into his bathroom without a please or may I? and went all around the room with a bug-finder.

  He picked up the remote and turned on the television. Changed channels. The news channel was off the air. All the general channels were off the air. The weather channel worked. One entertainment channel did.

  “Half the channels are off.”

  Jago looked at him, bent over, examining the box that held one end of the wire. “The storm last night, perhaps.”

  “They were working this morning.”

  “I don’t know, nadi Bren. Maybe they’re doing repairs.”

  He flung the remote down on the bed. “We have a saying. One of those days.”

  “What, one of those days?”

  “When nothing works.”

  “A day now or a day to come?” Jago was rightside up now. Atevi verbs had necessary time-distinctions. Banichi spoke a little Mosphei’. Jago was a little more language-bound.

  “Nadi Jago. What are you looking for?”

  “The entry counter.”

  “It counts entries.”

  “In a very special way, nadi Bren. If it should be a professional, one can’t suppose there aren’t countermeasures.”

  “It won’t be any professional. They’re required to file. Aren’t they?”

  “People are required to behave well. Do they always? We have to assume the extreme.”

  One could expect the aiji’s assassins to be thorough, and to take precautions no one else would take—simply because they knew the utmost possibilities of their trade. He should be glad, he told himself, that he had them looking out for him.

  God, he hoped nobody broke in tonight. He didn’t want to wake up and find some body burning on his carpet.

  He didn’t want to find himself shot or knifed in his bed, either. An ateva who’d made one attempt undetected might lose his nerve and desist. If he was a professional, his employer, losing his nerve, might recall him.

  Might.

  You didn’t count on it. You didn’t ever quite count on it—you could just get a little easier as the days passed and hope the bastard wasn’t just awaiting a better window of opportunity.

  “A professional would have made it good,” he said to Jago.

  “We don’t lose many that we track,” Jago said.

  “It was raining.”

  “All the same,” Jago said.

  He wished she hadn’t said that.

  Banichi came back at supper, arrived with two new servants, and a cart with three suppers. Algini and Tano, Banichi called the pair, in introduction. Algini and Tano bowed with that degree of coolness that said they were high hall servants, thank you, and accustomed to fancier apartments.

  “I trusted Taigi and Moni,” Bren muttered, after the servants had left the cart.

  “Algini and Tano have clearances,” Banichi said.

  “Clearances. —Did you get my mail? Someone got my mail.”

  “I left it at the office. Forgive me.”

  He could ask Banichi to go back after it. He could insist that Banichi go back after it. But Banichi’s supper would be cold—Banichi having invited himself and Jago to supper in his apartment.

  He sighed and fetched an extra chair. Jago brought another from the side of the room. Banichi set up the leaves of the serving table and set out the dishes, mostly cooked fruit, heavily spiced, game from the reserve at Nanjiran. Atevi didn’t keep animals for slaughter, not the Ragi atevi, at any rate. Mospheira traded with the tropics, with the Nisebi, down south, for processed meat, preserved meat, which didn’t have to be sliced thin enough to admit daylight—a commerce which Tabini-aiji called disgraceful, and which Bren had reluctantly promised to try to discourage, the paidhi being obliged to exert bidirectional influence, although without any veto power over human habits.

  So even on Mospheira it wasn’t politic for the paidhi to eat anything but game, and that in appropriate season. To preserve meat was commercial, and commercialism regarding an animal life taken was not kabiu, not ‘in the spirit of good example.’ The aiji’s household had to be kabiu. Very kabiu.

  And observing this point of refinement was, Tabini had pointed out to him with particular satisfaction in turning the tables, ecologically sound harvesting practice. Which the paidhi must, of course, support with the same enthusiasm when it came from atevi.

  Down in the city market you could get a choice of meats. Frozen, canned, and air-dried.

  “Aren’t you hungry, nadi?”

  “Not my favorite season.” He was graceless this evening. And unhappy. “Nobody knows anything. Nobody tells me anything. I appreciate the aiji’s concern. And yours. But is ther
e some particular reason I can’t fly home for a day or two?”

  “The aiji—”

  “Needs me. But no one knows why. You wouldn’t mislead me, would you, Jago?”

  “It’s my profession, nadi Bren.”

  “To lie to me.”

  There was an awkward silence at the table. He’d intended his bluntness as bitter humor. It had come out at the wrong moment, into the wrong mood, into their honest and probably frustrated efforts to find answers. Of all humans, he was educated not to make mistakes with them.

  “Forgive me,” he said.

  “His culture will lie,” Banichi said plainly to Jago. “But admitting one has done so insults the victim.”

  Jago took on a puzzled look.

  “Forgive me,” Bren said again. “It was a joke, nadi

  Jago.”

  Jago still looked puzzled, and frowned, but not angrily. “We take this threat very seriously.”

  “I didn’t. I’m beginning to.” He thought: Where’s my mail, Banichi? But he had a mouthful of soup instead. Making too much haste with atevi was not, not productive. “I’m grateful. I’m sure you had other plans this evening.”

  “No,” said Jago.

  “Still,” he said, wondering if they’d fixed the television outage yet, and what he was going to say to Banichi and Jago for small talk for the rest of the evening. Maybe there was a play on the entertainment channel. It seemed they might stay the night.

  And in whose bed would they sleep, he asked himself.—Or would they sleep? They didn’t show the effects of last night at all.

  “Do you play cards?”

  “Cards?” Jago asked, and Banichi shoved his chair back and said he should teach her.

  “What are cards?” Jago asked, when what Bren wanted to ask Banichi involved his mail. But Banichi probably had far more important things on his mind—like checking with security, and being sure surveillance items were working.

  “It’s a numerical game,” Bren said, wishing Banichi wasn’t deserting him to Jago—he hoped not for the night. When are you leaving? wasn’t a politic question. He was still trying to figure how to ask it of Banichi, or what he should say if Banichi said Jago was staying … when Banichi went out the door, with,