Foreigner

by C. J. Cherryh

  Business went on all around him, with no explanations. He felt chilled, despite the robe, and thought how desperately he needed his sleep—in order to deal with the dowager in the morning.

  “Are there protections around this place?” he asked.

  “Assuredly, nadi-ji. This is still a fortress, when it needs to be.”

  “With the tourists and all.”

  “Tourists. Yes. —There is a group due tomorrow, nadi. Please be prudent. They needn’t see you.”

  He felt himself more and more fragile, standing shivering in front of the fire in his night-robe. “Do people ever … slip away from the tour, slip out of the guards’ sight?”

  “There’s a severe fine for that,” Jago said.

  “Probably one for killing the paidhi, too,” he muttered. His robe had no pockets. You could never convince an atevi tailor about pockets. He shoved his hands up the sleeves. “A month’s pay, at least.”

  Jago thought that was funny. He heard her laugh, a rare sound. That was her reassurance.

  “I’m supposed to be at breakfast with Tabini’s grandmother,” he said. “Banichi’s mad at me.”

  “Why did you accept?”

  “I didn’t know I could refuse. I didn’t know what trouble it would make—”

  Jago made a soft, derisive sound. “Banichi said it was because you thought he was a dessert.”

  He couldn’t laugh for a moment. It was too grim, and on the edge of pain; and then it was funny, Banichi’s glum perplexity, his human desperation to find a focus for his orphaned affections. Jago’s sudden, unprecedented willingness to converse.

  “I take it this was confused in translation,” Jago said.

  “I expressed my extreme respect for him,” he said. Which was cold, and distant, and proper. The whole futile argument loomed up, insurmountable barriers again. “Respect. Favor. It’s all one thing.”

  “How?” Jago asked—a completely honest question. The atevi words didn’t mean what he tried to make them mean. They couldn’t, wouldn’t ever. The whole atevi hardwiring was different, the experts said so. The dynamics of atevi relationships were different … in ways no paidhi had ever figured out, either, possibly because paidhiin invariably tried to find words to fit into human terms—and then deceived themselves about the meanings, in self-defense, when the atevi world grew too much for them.

  God, why did she decide to talk tonight? Was it policy? An interrogation?

  “Nadi,” he said wearily, “if I could say that, you’d understand us ever so much better.”

  “Banichi speaks Mosphei’. You should say it to him in Mosphei’.”

  “Banichi doesn’t feel Mosphei’.” It was late. He was extremely foolish. He made a desperate, far-reaching attempt to locate abstracts. “I tried to express that I would do favorable things on his behalf because he seems to me a favorable person.”

  It at least threw it into the abstract realm, that perception of luck in charge of the universe, which somewhat passed for a god in Ragi thinking.

  “Midei,” Jago declared in seeming surprise. It was a word he’d not heard before, and there weren’t many, in ordinary usage, that he hadn’t. “Dahemidei. You’re midedeni.”

  That was three in a row. He was too tired to take notes and the damned computer was down. “What does that mean?”

  “Midedeni believe luck and favor reside in people. It was a heresy, of course.”

  Of course it was. “So it was a long time ago.”

  “Oh, half of Adjaiwaio still believes something like that, in the country, anyway—that you’re supposed to Associate with everybody you meet.”

  An entire remote Association where people liked other people? He both wanted to go there and feared there were other essential, perhaps Treaty-threatening, differences.

  “You really believe in that?” Jago pursued the matter. And it was indeed dangerous, how scattered and longing his thoughts instantly grew down that track, how difficult it was to structure logical arguments against the notion, the very seductive notion that atevi could understand affection. “The lords of technology truly think this is the case?”

  Jago clearly thought intelligent people weren’t expected to think so.

  Which made him question himself, in the paidhi’s internal habit, whether humans were somehow blind to the primitive character of such attachments.

  Then the dislocation jerked him the other direction, back into belief humans were right. “Something like that,” he said. The experts said atevi couldn’t think outside hierarchical structure. And Jago said they could? His heart was pounding. His common sense said hold back, don’t believe it, there’s a contradiction here. “So you can feel attachment to one you don’t have man’chi for.”

  “Nadi Bren, —are you making a sexual proposition to me?”

  The bottom dropped out of his stomach. “I—No, Jago-ji.”

  “I wondered.”

  “Forgive my impropriety.”

  “Forgive my mistaken notion. What were you asking?”

  “I—” Recovering objectivity was impossible. Or it had never existed. “I’d only like to read about midedeni, if you could find a book for me.”

  “Certainly. But I doubt there’d be one here. Malguri’s library is mostly local history. The midedeni were all eastern.”

  “I’d like a book to keep, if I could.”

  “I’m sure. I have one, if nothing else, but it’s in Shejidan.”

  He’d made a thorough mess. And left a person who was probably reporting directly to Tabini with the impression humans belonged to some dead heresy they probably didn’t even remotely match.

  “It probably isn’t applicable,” he said, trying to patch matters. “Exact correspondence is just too unlikely.” Jago had a brain. A very quick one; and he risked something he ordinarily would have said only to Tabini. “It’s the apparent correspondences that can be the most deceptive. We want to believe them.”

  “At very least, we’re polite in Shejidan. We don’t shoot people over philosophical differences. I wouldn’t take such a contract.”

  God help him. He thought that was a joke out of Jago. The second for the evening. “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “I hope I don’t offend you, nadi.”

  “I like you, too.”

  In atev’, it was very funny. It won Jago’s rare grin, a duck of the head, a flash of that eerie mirror-luminance of her eyes, quite, quite sober.

  “I haven’t understood,” she said. “It eludes me, nadi.”

  The best will in the world couldn’t bridge the gap. He looked at her in a sense of isolation he hadn’t felt since his first week on the mainland, his first unintended mistake with atevi.

  “But you try, Jago-ji. Banichi tries, too. It makes me less—” There was no word for lonely. “Less single.”

  “We share a man’chi,” Jago said, as if she had understood something he was saying. “To Tabini’s house. Don’t doubt us, paidhi-ji. We won’t desert you.”

  Off the meaning again. There was nothing there, nothing to make the leap of logic. He stared at her, asking himself how someone so fundamentally honest, and kind, granted the license she had—could be so absolutely void of what it might take to make that leap of emotional need. It just didn’t click into place. And it was a mistake to pin anything on the Adjaiwaio and any dead philosophy.

  Philosophy was the keyword: intellectual, not emotional structure. And a human being, having embraced it, went away empty and in pain.

  He said, “Thank you, nadi-ji,” and walked away from the fire to the window, which showed nothing but rain-spots against the dark.

  Something banged, or popped. It echoed off the walls, once, twice.

  That was no loose shutter. It was off somewhere outside the walls, to the southwest, he thought, beyond the driveway.

  The house seemed very still, except the rain and the sound of the fire on the hearth.

  “Get away from the window,” Jago said, and he stepped back imme
diately, his shoulder to solid stone, his heart beating like a hammer as he expected Jago to leave him and rush off to Banichi’s aid. His imagination leapt to four and five assassins breaching the antique defenses of the castle, enemies already inside the walls.

  But Jago only stood listening, as it seemed. There was no second report. Her pocket-com beeped—he had not seen it on her person, but of course she had it; she lifted it and thumbed on to Banichi’s voice, speaking in verbal code.

  “Tano shot at shadows,” she translated, glancing at him. She was a black shape against the fire. “It’s all right. He’s not licensed.”

  Understandable that Tano would make a mistake in judgement, she meant. So Tano, at least, and probably Algini, was out of Tabini’s house guard—licensed for firearms, for defense, but not for their use in public places.

  “So was it lightning?” he asked. “Is it lightning they’re shooting at out there?”

  “Nervous fingers,” Jago said easily, and shut the com off. “Nothing at all to worry about, nadi-ji.”

  “How long until we have power?”

  “As soon as the crews can get up here from Maidingi. Morning, I’d say, before we have lights. This happens, nadi. The cannon on the wall draw strikes very frequently. So, unfortunately, does the transformer. It’s not at all uncommon.”

  Breakfast might be cancelled, due to the power failure. He might have a reprieve from his folly.

  “I suggest you go to bed,” Jago said. “I’ll sit here and read until the rest of us come in. You’ve an appointment in the morning.”

  “We were discussing man’chi,” he said, unnerved, be it the storm or the shot or his own failures. He’d gotten far too personal with Jago, right down to her assumption he was trying to approach her for sex, God help him. He was tangling every line of communication he had, he was on an emotional jag, he felt entirely uneasy about the impression he’d left with her, an impression she was doubtless going to convey to Banichi, and both of them to Tabini: the paidhi’s behaving very oddly, they’d say. He propositioned Jago, invited Djinana to the moon, and thinks Banichi’s a dessert.

  “Were we?” Jago left the fire and walked over to him, taking his arm. “Let’s walk back to your bedroom, nand’ paidhi, you’ll take a chill—” She outright snatched him past the window, bruising his arm, he so little expected it.

  He walked with her, then, telling himself if she were really concerned she’d have made him crawl beneath it—she only wanted him away from a window that would glow with conspicuous light from the fire, and cast their shadows. There were the outer walls, between that window and the lake.

  But was it lightning hitting the cannon that she feared?

  “Go to bed,” Jago said, delivering him to the door of his bedroom. “Bren-ji. Don’t worry. They’ll be assessing damage. We’ll need to call down to the power station with the information. And of course we take special precautions when we do lose power. It’s only routine. You may hear me go out. You may not. Don’t worry for your safety.”

  So one could call the airport on the security radio. One would have thought so. But it was the first he’d heard anyone admit it. And having security trekking through his room all night didn’t promise a good night’s sleep.

  But he sat down on the bed and Jago walked back to the other room, leaving him in the almost dark. He took off his robe, put himself beneath the skins, and lay listening, watching the faint light from the fireplace in the other room make moving shadows on the walls and glisten on the glass eyes of the beast opposite his bed.

  They say it’s perfectly safe, he thought at it. Don’t worry.

  It made a sort of sense to talk to it, the two of them in such intimate relationship. It was a creature of this planet. It had died mad, fighting atevi who’d enjoyed killing it. Nobody needed to feel sorry for anybody. It wasn’t the last of its species. There were probably hundreds of thousands of its kind out there in the underbrush as mad and pitiless as it was.

  Adapted for this earth. It didn’t make attachments to its young or its associates. It didn’t need them. Nature fitted it with a hierarchical sense of dominance, survival positive, proof against heartbreak.

  It survived until something meaner killed it and stuck its head on a wall, for company to a foolish human, who’d let himself in for this—who’d chased after the knowledge and then the honor of being the best.

  Which had to be enough to go to bed with on nights like this. Because there damned sure wasn’t anything else, and if he let himself—

  But he couldn’t. The paidhi couldn’t start, at twenty-six atevi years of age, to humanize the people he dealt with. It was the worst trap. All his predecessors had battled it. He knew it in theory.

  He’d been doing all right while he was an hour’s flight away from Mospheira. While his mail arrived on schedule, twice a week. While …

  While he’d believed beyond a doubt he was going to see human faces again, and while things were going outstandingly well, and while Tabini and he were such, such good friends.

  Key that word, Friend.

  The paidhi had been in a damned lot of trouble, right there. The paidhi had been stone blind, right there.

  The paidhi didn’t know why he was here, the paidhi didn’t know how he was going to get back again, the paidhi couldn’t get the emotional satisfaction out of Banichi and Jago that Tabini had been feeding him, laughing with him, joking with him, down to the last time they’d met.

  Blowing melons to bits. Tabini patting him on the back—gently, because human backs fractured so easily—and telling him he had real talent for firearms. How good was Tabini, more to the point? How good at reading the paidhi was the atevi fourth in line of his side of the bargain?

  Tipped off, perhaps, by his predecessor, that the paidhiin had a soft spot for personal attachments?

  That the longer you knew them, the greater fools they became, and the more trusting, and the easier to get things from?

  There was a painful lump in his throat, a painful, human knot interfering with his rational assessment of the situation. He’d questioned, occasionally, how long he was good for, whether he could adjust. Not every paidhi made it the lifelong commitment they’d signed on for, the pool of available advice had dried up—Wilson hadn’t been a damned bit of help, just gotten strange and so short-fused the board had talked about replacing him against Tabini’s father’s expressed refusal to have him replaced. Wilson had had his third heart attack the first month he was back on Mospheira, maintained a grim, passionless demeanor in every meeting the two of them had had, never told him a damned thing of any use.

  The board called it burn-out. He’d taken their word for it and tried not to think of Wilson as a son of a bitch. He’d met Tabini on his few fill-ins for Wilson’s absences, a few days at a time, the two last years of Valasi’s administration—he’d thought Tabini’s predecessor Valasi a real match for Wilson’s glum mood, but he’d liked Tabini—that dangerous word again—but, point of fact, he’d never personally believed in Wilson’s bum-out. A man didn’t get that strange, that unpleasant, without his own character contributing to it. He’d not liked Wilson, and when he’d asked Wilson what his impression was of Tabini, Wilson had said, in a surly tone, “The same as the rest of them.”

  He’d not liked Wilson. He had liked Tabini. He’d thought it a mistake on the board’s part to have ever let Wilson take office, a man with that kind of prejudice, that kind of attitude.

  He was scared tonight. He looked down the years he might stay in office and the years he might waste in the foolishness he called friendship with Tabini, and saw himself in Wilson’s place, never having had a wife, never having had a child, never having had a friend past the day Barb would find some man on Mospheira a better investment: life was too short to stay at the beck and call of some guy dropping into her life with no explanations, no conversation about his job—a face that began to go dead as if the nerves of expression were cut.

  He could resign. He could go home
. He could ask Barb to marry him.

  But he had no guarantee Barb wanted to marry him. No questions, no commitment, no unloading of problems, a fairy-tale weekend of fancy restaurants and luxury hotels … he didn’t know what Barb really thought, he didn’t know what Barb really wanted, he didn’t know her in any way but the terms they’d met on, the terms they still had. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even close friendship. When he tried to think of the people he’d called friends before he went into university … he didn’t know where they were now, if they’d left the town, or if they’d stayed.

  He hadn’t been able to turn the situation over to Deana Hanks for a week. Where did he think he was going to find it in him to turn the whole job over to her and walk out—irrevocably, walk out on what he’d prepared his whole life to do?

  Like Wilson—a man seventy years old, who’d just seen Valasi assassinated, who’d just come home, because his career ended with Valasi—with nothing to show for forty-three years of work but the dictionary entries he’d made, a handful of scholarly articles, and a record number of vetoes on the Transmontane Highway Project. No wife, no family. Nothing but the university teaching post waiting for him, and he couldn’t communicate with the students.

  Wilson couldn’t communicate with the human students.

  He was going to write a paper when he got out of this, however damning it was, a paper about Wilson, and the atevi interface, and the talk he’d had with Jago, and why Wilson, with that face, with that demeanor, with that attitude, couldn’t communicate with his classes.

  Thunder crashed, outside his wall. He jumped, and lay there with his heart doing double beats and his ears still ringing.

  The cannon, Jago said. Common occurrence.

  He lay there and shook, whether because of the noise, or the craziness of the night. Or because he couldn’t understand any longer why he was here, or why a Bu-javid guard like Tano drew a gun and fired, when they were out there looking at transformers.

  Looking at lightning-struck transformers, while the lightning played over their heads and the rain fell on them.