Foreigner

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Tea,” he recalled distractedly. “Yes—” He felt chilled in spite of the fire, having come, a few hours ago, from a much more southerly and coastal climate, and having suffered a long drive over a trying road. Hot tea appealed to him, and it came to him that, in the confusion, he hadn’t had breakfast, or lunch, except a few wafers on the plane. “Is there a cheese pie, do you think?” That was usually safe, whatever the season.

  “Of course, nadi. Although I should remind the paidhi that dinner is only an hour away. …”

  The time zones, he realized. He’d never been far enough from Mospheira to meet one. But not only was the climate colder, the time zones had to be at least two hours advanced. He wasn’t sure how his stomach agreed with that sudden piece of information, or whether he could last an hour until supper, now that he was thinking about food.

  Thunder rumbled, and lightning flashed, whiting out the windows. “No pie, then,” he said, and decided life was not necessarily fast-paced here: he might find diversion in a leisurely, lodge-style supper. “Just the tea, please.”

  But he was thinking, hearing another furious spate of rain hit the windows, God, I understand why there’s a lake here.

  Supper arrived, after the tea, elegantly served in the dining room. Definitely lodge-style cuisine, and he certainly had no complaint against the menu—the seasonal game, thank God, was different here in the highlands.

  But it was a solitary supper—himself alone at the very long and silent table—at the endmost seat, so he could see the window in the sitting room, which he thought would be pleasant, but they were so high up, on the second floor, he had no view but the gray sky, which was darkening sullenly to dusk. Tano and Algini ate in their quarters, Maigi and Djinana served, and he hardly knew either set of servants well enough to make conversation. Attempts died in, Yes, nand’ paidhi, thank you, nand’ paidhi, the cook will be glad, nand’ paidhi.

  Finally, though, during the second, post game-dish soup course, Jago came, leaned her arms on the back of the nearest of the ten chairs on either side of the table, and made idle chatter with him, how did he find the accommodations, how did he find the staff?

  “Wonderful,” he said. “Though I haven’t seen a phone connection. Or the wires. Is there a portable I could borrow?”

  “There’s one, I believe, in the security station. But it’s raining.”

  Still.

  “You mean the security station is outside.”

  “I fear it is. And I really don’t think it prudent to call out, nadi Bren.”

  “Why?” It came out angry, and he hadn’t meant that. Jago had instantly withdrawn her elbows from the chair back and stood up straight. “Forgive me, nadi,” he said more moderately. “But I do need to reach my office on some regular basis. I urgently need to have my mail. I do hope my mail is going to get up that difficult road.”

  Jago heaved a sigh and set her hands on the chair back. “Nadi Bren,” she said patiently, “while I don’t think our moving you from the capital necessarily deceived anyone, it would hardly be wise to have you phoning out. They’ll expect decoys. Let them think our flight to Malguri was exactly that.”

  “Then you know something about them.”

  “No. Not actually.”

  He was tired, he had had the self-restraint scared out of him, on the drive up, and no matter how much the atevi liked their courtesies and facades, he had felt the situation slipping farther and farther from his control for two days, now. He wanted something to be clear to him. He was ready to lose all patience.

  Instead he said, mildly, “I know you’ve done your best. Probably you’d rather be elsewhere than here.”

  Jago’s brow furrowed. “Have I given such an impression?”

  God help him, he thought. “No, of course not. But I suppose you have other duties than me.”

  “No.”

  Jago had a habit of doing that to conversations, he decided, once you inquired about anything useful, anything you really wanted to know. He took a spoonful of soup, hoping Jago would find something to say.

  She didn’t. She leaned on the chair back, evidently at her ease.

  He took another spoonful, and a third, and still Jago leaned on the chair, evidently content to watch him, or guarding him, or something. Thunder was still rumbling outside.

  “Are you going to stay at Malguri?” he asked.

  “Most likely.”

  “Do you expect whoever invaded my room can reach here, too?”

  “Less likely.”

  It went like that, by one syllable and two, and never much more, once he’d started asking questions.

  “When do you think the rain will stop?” he asked her finally, only to make Jago carry the conversation for more than three beats.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. And stopped.

  “Jago, do you favor me? Or am I in your disfavor?”

  “Of course not, nadi Bren.”

  “Have I done something for Tabini to be put out with me?”

  “Not that I know.”

  “Are they sending my mail?”

  “Banichi’s asking about that. It takes authorizations.”

  “Whose?”

  “We’re working on it.”

  Thunder rolled above the fortress. He finished his supper, intermittent with question and answer with Jago, had a drink or two in which Jago did not share, and even wished, if, as Banichi had said, Jago found him in the least attractive, she would stay in his sitting room and at least make some polite pass at him, if it meant she initiated four consecutive sentences. He just wanted someone to talk to.

  But Jago left, all business, seeming preoccupied. The servants cleared supper away in silence.

  He cast about for what to do with himself, and thought about a resumption of his regular habits, watching the evening news … which, now that he thought about it, he had no television to receive.

  He didn’t ask the servants about the matter. He opened cabinets and armoires, and finally made the entire circuit of the apartments, looking for nothing more basic now than a power tap.

  Not one. Not a hint of accommodation for television or telephones.

  Or computer recharges.

  He thought about ringing the bell, rousing the servants and demanding an extension cord, at least, so he could use his almost depleted computer tonight, if they had to run the cord up from the kitchens or via an adapter, which had to exist in some electronics store in this benighted district, down from an electric light socket.

  But Banichi hadn’t put in an appearance since they parted company downstairs, Jago had refused the request for a phone already, and after pacing the carpeted wooden floors awhile and investigating the small library for something to do, he went to bed in disgust—flung himself into the curtained bed among the skins of dead animals and discovered that one, there was no reading light, two, the lights were all controlled from a switch at the doorway; and, three, a dead and angry beast was staring straight at him, from the opposite wall.

  It wasn’t me, he thought at it. It wasn’t my fault. I probably wasn’t born when you died.

  My species probably hadn’t left the homeworld yet.

  It’s not my fault, beast. We’re both stuck here.

  IV

  Morning dawned through a rain-spattered glass, and breakfast didn’t arrive automatically. He pulled the chain to call for it, delivered his request to Maigi, who was at least prompt to appear, and had Djinana light the fire for an after-breakfast bath.

  Then there was the “accommodation” question; and, faced with trekking downstairs before breakfast in search of a modern bathroom, he opted for privacy and for coping with what evidently worked, in its fashion, which required no embarrassed questions and no (diplomatically speaking) appearance of despising what was—with effort—an elegant, historic hospitality. He managed. He decided that, left alone, he could get used to it.

  The paidhi’s job, he thought, was to adapt. Somehow.

  Breakfast, God, was four cou
rses. He saw his waistline doubling before his eyes and ordered a simple poached fish and piece of fruit for lunch, then shooed the servants out and took his leisurely bath, thoroughly self-indulgent. Life in Malguri was of necessity a matter of planning ahead, not just turning a tap. But the water was hot.

  He didn’t ask Tano and Algini in for their non-conversation while he bathed (“Yes, nadi, no, nadi.”) or their help in dressing. He found no actual purpose for dressing: no agenda, nowhere to go until lunch, so far as Banichi and Jago had advised him.

  So he wrapped himself in his dressing gown and stared out the study window at a grayness in which the blue and amber glass edging was the only color. The lake was silver gray, set in dark gray bluffs and fog. The sky was milky gray, portending more rain. A last few drops jeweled the glass.

  It was exotic. It damned sure wasn’t Shejidan. It wasn’t Mospheira, it wasn’t human, and it wasn’t so far as he could see any safer than Tabini’s own household, just less convenient. Without a plug-in for his computer.

  Maybe the assassin wouldn’t spend a plane ticket on him.

  Maybe boredom would send the rascal back to livelier climes.

  Maybe after a week of this splendid luxury he would hike to the train station and join the assassin in an escape himself.

  Fancies, all.

  He took the guest book from its shelf—anything to occupy his mind—took it back to the window where there was better light and leafed through it, looking at the names, realizing—as the leaves were added forward, rather than the reverse, after the habit of atevi books—that he was holding an antiquity that went back seven hundred years, at least; and that most of the occupants of these rooms had been aijiin, or the in-laws of aijiin, some of them well-known in history, like Pagioni, like Dagina, who’d signed the Controlled Resources Development Treaty with Mospheira—a canny, hard-headed fellow, who, thank God, had knocked heads together and eliminated a few highly dangerous, warlike obstacles in ways humans couldn’t.

  He was truly impressed. He opened it from the back, as atevi read—the right-left direction, and down—and discovered the foundation date of the first fortress on the site, as the van driver had said, was indeed an incredible two thousand years ago. Built of native stone, to hold the valuable water resource of Maidingi for the lowlands, and to prevent the constant raiding of hill tribes on the villages of the plain. The second, expanded, fortress—one supposed, including these very walls—dated from the sixty-first century.

  He leafed through changes and additions, found a tour schedule, of all things, once monthly, confined to the lower hall—(We ask our guests to ignore this monthly visit, which the aiji feels necessary and proper, as Malguri represents a treasure belonging to the people of the provinces. Should a guest wish to receive tour groups in formal or informal audience, please inform the staff and they will be most happy to make all arrangements. Certain guests have indeed done so, to the delight and honor of the visitors.…)

  Shock hell out of them, I would, Bren thought glumly. Send children screaming for their parents. None of the people here have seen a human face-to-face.

  Too much television, Banichi would say. Children in Shejidan had to be reassured about Mospheira, that humans weren’t going to leave there and turn up in their houses at night—so the report went. Atevi children knew about assassins. From television they knew about the War of the Landing. And the space station the world hadn’t asked to have. Which was going to swoop down and destroy the earth.

  His predecessor twice removed had tried to arrange to let humans tour the outlying towns. Several mayors had backed the idea. One had died for it.

  Paranoia still might run that deep—in the outlying districts—and he had no wish to push it, not now, not at this critical juncture, with one attempt already on his life. Lie low and lie quiet, was the role Tabini had assigned him, in sending him here. And he still, dammit, didn’t know what else he could have done wiser than he had, once the opportunity had passed to have made a phone call to Mospheira.

  If there’d ever been such an opportunity.

  Human pilots, in alternation with atevi crews, flew cargo from Mospheira to Shejidan, and to several coastal towns and back again … that was the freedom humans had now, when their forebears had flown between stars none of them remembered.

  Now the paidhi would be arrested, most likely, if he took a walk to town after an extension cord. His appearance could start riots, economic panics, rumors of descending space stations and death rays.

  He was depressed, to tell the truth. He had thought he had a good rapport with Tabini, he had thought, in his human way of needing such things, that Tabini was as close to a friend as an ateva was capable of being.

  Something was damned well wrong. At least wrong enough that Tabini couldn’t confide it to him. That was what everything added up to—either officially or personally. And he put the codex back on the shelf and took to pacing the floor, not that he intended to, but he found himself doing it, back and forth, back and forth, to the bedroom and back, and out to the sitting room, where the view of the lake at least afforded a ray of sunlight through the clouds. It struck brilliant silver on the water.

  It was a beautiful lake. It was a glorious view, when it wasn’t gray.

  He could be inspired, if his breakfast wasn’t lying like lead on his stomach.

  Hell if he wanted to go on being patient. The paidhi’s job might demand it. The paidhi’s job might be to sit still and figure out how to keep the peace, and maybe he hadn’t done that very well by discharging firearms in the aiji’s household. But …

  He hadn’t looked for the gun. He hadn’t even thought about it. Tano and Algini and Jago had done the actual packing and unpacking of his belongings.

  He blazed a straight course back to the bedroom, got down on his knees and felt under the mattress.

  His fingers met hard metal. Two pieces of hard metal, one a gun and one a clip of shells.

  He pulled them out, sitting on the floor as he was, in his dressing robe, with the gun in his hands and a sudden dread of someone walking in on him. He shoved the gun and the clip back where they belonged, and sat there asking himself—what in hell is this about?

  Nothing but that the paidhi’s in cold storage. And armed. And guarded. And his guards won’t tell him a cursed thing.

  Well, damn, he thought.

  And gathered himself up off the floor in a sudden fit of resolution, intending to push it as far as he had latitude and find out where the boundaries (however nebulous) might be. He went to the armoire and pulled out a good pair of pants; a sweater, obstinately human and impossible for atevi to judge for status statements; and his good brown hunting boots, that being the style of this country house.

  His favorite casual coat, the leather one.

  Then he walked out the impressive front doors of his suite and down the hall, an easy, idle stroll, down the stairs to the stone-floored main floor, making no attempt whatsoever at stealth, and along the hall to the grand central room, where a fire burned wastefully in the hearth, where the lights were all candles, and the massive front doors were shut.

  He walked about, idly examined the bric-a-brac, and objects on tables that might be functional and might be purely decorative—he didn’t know. He didn’t know what to call a good many of the objects on the walls, particularly the lethal ones. He didn’t recognize the odder heads and hides—he determined to find out the species and the status of those species, and add them to the data files for Mospheira, with illustrations, if he could get a book … or a copy machine …

  … or plug in the computer.

  His frustration hit new levels, at the latter thoughts. He thought about trying the front doors to see if they were locked, taking a walk out in the front courtyard, if they weren’t—maybe having a close up look at the cannon, and maybe at the gates and the road.

  Then he decided that that was probably pushing Banichi’s good humor much too far; possibly, too, and more to the point, risking Bani
chi’s carefully laid security arrangements … which might catch him instead of an assassin.

  So he opted to take a stroll back into the rest of the building instead, down an ornate corridor, and into plain ones, past doors he didn’t venture to open. If assassins might venture in here looking for him, especially in the dark, he wanted a mental map of the halls and the rooms and the stairways that might become escape routes.

  He located the kitchens. And the storerooms.

  And a hall at a right angle, which offered slit windows and a view out toward the mountains. He took that turn, having discovered, he supposed, the outside wall, and he walked the long corridor to the end, where he found a choice: one hallway tending off to the left and another to the right.

  The left must be another wing of the building, he decided, and, seeing double doors down that direction, and those doors shut, he had a sudden chilling thought of personal residence areas, wires, and security systems.

  He reasoned then that the more prudent direction for him to take, if he had come to private apartments of some sort, where security arrangements might be far more modern than the lighting, was back toward the front of the building, boxing the square toward the front hall and the foyer.

  The hall he walked was going that direction, at about the right distance of separation, he was increasingly confident, to end up as the corridor that exited near the stairs leading up to his floor. He walked past one more side hall and a left-right-straight-ahead choice, and, indeed, ended up in the archway entry to the grand hall in front of the main doors, where the fireplace was.

  Fairly good navigation, he thought, and walked back to the warmth of the fireplace, where he had started his exploration of the back halls.

  “Well,” someone said, close behind him.

  He had thought the fireside unoccupied. He turned in alarm to see a wizened little ateva, with white in her black hair, sitting in one of the high-backed leather chairs … diminutive woman—for her kind.

  “Well?” she said again, and snapped her book closed. “You’re Bren. Yes?”