Foreigner

by C. J. Cherryh

  “In atevi invention.”

  “Very much so.”

  “What can we possibly invent? Humans have done it all.”

  “Oh, no, no, nadi, far from all. It’s a wide universe. And our ship did once break down.”

  “Wide enough, this universe?”

  He almost said—beyond calculation. But that was heresy. “At least beyond what I know, nadi. Beyond any limit we’ve found with our ships.”

  “Is it? But what use is it?”

  Occasionally he met a new atevi attitude—inevitably astonishing. “What use is the earth, nadi? What use is the whole world except that we’re in it? It’s where we are, nadi. Its use is that we exist. There may be more important positions in the universe, but from where we stand, it’s all that is important.”

  “You believe that some things are uncountable?”

  The heresy pit again. He reached for an irrefutable answer, knowing that, if the wrong thing went down on tape—the extremists had him. “If one had the vision to see them, I’m sure one could count them.”

  “Does anyone have universal vision?”

  Another atevi sect, for all he knew. “I wouldn’t know, nadi. I’m certainly not that person.”

  Damned if Cenedi believed the numerologists. But what Cenedi might want for political reasons, he had no way to guess. He wanted out of this line of questioning.

  “More tea?” Cenedi asked him.

  “Nadi, thank you, I have some left.”

  “Do you suspect me personally as an enemy?”

  “I don’t know. I certainly hope not. I’ve found your company pleasant and I hope it to continue.”

  “There is nothing personal in my position, nand’ paidhi.”

  “I trust so. I don’t know how I could have offended you. Certainly not by intent.”

  “Heresy is not the charge here, understand. I find all the number-counting complete, primitive foolishness.”

  “But tapes can be edited.”

  “So can television,” Cenedi said. “You provided Tabini-aiji with abundant material today.”

  The television? He’d put it from his mind, in the shock of reading Tabini’s letter. But now that Cenedi said it, he factored it in with that letter—all the personal, easy questions, about himself, his life, his associations.

  Double-cross, by the only ateva he absolutely trusted with his life, double-cross by the aiji who held all the agreements with human civilization.

  Tabini had armed him against assassins—and in the light of that letter he couldn’t prove the assassins weren’t Tabini’s. Tabini gave him a gun that could be found and traced by the markings on its bullets.

  But when he’d used it, and drawn blood, Banichi had given him another. He didn’t understand that.

  Although perhaps Banichi hadn’t understood then, either, and done the loyal thing, not being in on the plot. All his reckonings ran in circles—and now Banichi’s gun was gone from under his mattress, when they could photograph anything, plant any piece of evidence, and fill in the serial numbers later … he knew at least some of the tricks they could use. He’d studied them. The administration had made him study them until his head rattled with them, and he hadn’t wanted to believe he’d ever need to know.

  Not with Tabini, no.

  Not with a man who confided in him, who told him official secrets he didn’t, out of respect for this man, convey to Mospheira. … “How many people live on Mospheira?” Cenedi asked.

  “You asked that, nadi. About four million. Four million three hundred thousand.”

  “We’ll repeat questions from time to time, just to be sure.—Does that count children?”

  Question after question, then, about support for the rail system, about the vetoes his predecessor had cast, about power plants, about dams and highways and the ecological studies, on Mospheira and on the mainland.

  About the air link between the island and the mainland, and the road system in Mospheira’s highland north and center. Nothing at any point that was classified. Nothing they couldn’t find out from the catalogs and from his private mail, wherever that was going.

  Probably they had found it out from his mail, long before the satellites. They might have, out of the vacation catalogs, assembled a mosaic of Mospheira’s roads, cities, streets, might have photographed the coastal cities, where regular cargo flights came in from Shejidan and flew out with human-manufactured electronics, textiles, seafood and pharmaceuticals.

  “Do you have many associates on Mospheira, nadi? What are their names?”

  “What do you do regularly when you go back to Mospheira, nadi? Surely you spend some official time …?”

  “You had a weapon in your quarters, nadi. What did you plan to do with it?”

  Admit nothing, he thought. There was no friendly question.

  “I’m unaware of any gun.”

  “An object that size, under your mattress.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it arrived and departed the same day.”

  “Please don’t joke, nadi. This is an extremely serious business.”

  “I’m aware it is. But I assure you, I didn’t bring it here and I didn’t put it under my mattress.”

  “It appeared spontaneously.”

  “It must have. I’ve no other answer. Nadi, what would I do with it? I’m no marksman. I’m no danger with a gun, except to myself and the furniture.”

  “Nadi. We know this gun didn’t originate in Malguri. We have its registration.”

  He looked elsewhere, at the double-edged shadows on the wall. Maybe Tabini had lost politically, somehow, in some way that mandated turning him over to a rival entity. He didn’t know who he was defending, now, in the matter of the disappearing gun, whether Tabini from his rivals or Banichi from prosecution, or whether Banichi’s substitution of that gun had muddied things up so badly that everyone looked guilty.

  But he had no question now where the gun had gone.

  And, as for lying, he adopted his own official line.

  “Nadi,” Cenedi said. “Answer the question.”

  “I thought it was a statement, nadi. Forgive me. I don’t own a gun. I didn’t put it there. That’s all I can say.”

  “You fired at the assassin in Shejidan, nand’ paidhi.”

  “No. I raised an alarm. Banichi fired when the man ran.”

  “Banichi’s aim is not, then, what I’d expect of him.”

  “It was dark, it was raining, and the man was running.”

  “And there was no one but yourself in the room.”

  “I heard a noise. I roused the guard.”

  “Banichi regularly stands guard by your door at night?”

  “I don’t know, I suppose he had some business in the halls—some lady. I didn’t ask him.”

  “Nadi, you’re lying. This doesn’t help anyone.”

  “Only three people in the world know what happened that night: myself, Banichi, and the man on that balcony—who was surely not you, Cenedi-ji. Was it?”

  “No. It’s not my method of choice.”

  That was probably a joke. He didn’t know whether to take it as one. He was scared, and sure that Cenedi had information from sources he didn’t know about. Cenedi was building a case of some kind. And while there were laws against kidnapping, and against holding a person by force, there were none against what Tabini had done in sending him here.

  “You have no idea how the gun got there,” Cenedi said. “You state emphatically that you didn’t know it was there.”

  “Yes.”

  Cenedi leaned back in his chair and stared at him, a long, long moment.

  “Banichi gave you the gun.”

  “No, nadi. He did not.”

  “Nand’ paidhi, there are people of the dowager’s acquaintance, closely associated people, whose associations with Tabini-aiji are through the aiji-dowager. They don’t accept this piece of paper, this Treaty with Mospheira. Pieces of paper don’t impress them at all, and, quite frankly, they don’t co
nsider the cession of Mospheira legitimate or effective.”

  That crowd, he thought with a chill. The conservative fringe. The attack-the-beaches element. He didn’t want to believe it.

  “We’ve received inquiry from them,” Cenedi said. “In fact, their agents have come to Malguri requesting you be turned over to them, urging the aiji-dowager to abandon association with Tabini altogether. They argue the Treaty is valueless. That Tabini-aiji is leading in a wrong direction. We’ve arranged a compromise. They need certain information, I’ve indicated we can obtain it for them, and they’ll not request you be turned over to them.”

  It was a nightmare. He didn’t know what aspect of it to try to deal with. Finding out where Cenedi stood seemed foremost.

  “Are you working for the aiji-dowager, nadi?”

  “Always. Without exception.”

  “And what side is she taking? For or against Tabini?”

  “She has no man’chi. She acts for herself.”

  “To replace him?”

  “That would be a possibility, nadi. She would do nothing that reduces her independence.”

  Nothing that reduces her independence. Ilisidi had lost the election in the hasdrawad. Twice. Once five years ago, to Tabini.

  And Tabini had to write that letter and send him to Ilisidi?

  “Will you give me the statements I need, nand’ paidhi?”

  It wasn’t an easy answer. Possibly—possibly Tabini hadn’t really betrayed him. Possibly Tabini’s administration was on its way down in defeat, and he’d never felt the earthquake. He couldn’t believe that. But atevi politics had confounded paidhiin before him.

  “Nand’ paidhi,” Cenedi said. “These people have sent to Malguri to bring you back to their authorities. If I give you over to them, I don’t say we can’t get you back—but in what condition I can hardly promise. They might carry their questioning much further, into technology, weapons, and space-based systems, things in which we have no interest, and in which we have no reason to believe you haven’t told the truth. Please don’t delude yourself: this is not machimi, and no one keeps secrets from professionals. If you give me the statement I want, that will bring Tabini down, we can be cordial. If I can’t show them that—”

  His mind was racing. He was losing bits of what Cenedi was saying, and that could be disastrous.

  “—I’ve no choice but to let them obtain it their way. And I had much rather keep you from that, nand’ paidhi. Again: who fired the gun?”

  “Banichi fired the gun.”

  “Who gave you the gun?”

  “No one gave me a gun, nadi.”

  Cenedi sighed and pressed a button. Not a historical relic, a distracted corner of his mind objected. But probably a great deal else around Cenedi’s office wasn’t historical, or outmoded.

  They waited. He could, he thought, change his mind. He could give Cenedi what he wanted, change sides—but he had Cenedi’s word … and that letter … to tell him what was really going on, and he didn’t believe it, not wholly. Tabini had been too canny, too much the politician, to go down without a maneuver tried, and he might, for all he knew, be a piece Tabini still counted his. Still relied on.

  Which was stupid to think. If Tabini wanted him to take any active role in this, if that letter wasn’t to take seriously, Tabini could have told him, Banichi or Jago could have told him—someone could have told him what in hell they wanted him to do.

  And he could have called his office, the way he was supposed to, and filed a report.

  X

  The door behind him opened. He had no illusions about making an escape from Malguri—half the continent away from human territory, with no phone and no one to rely on except Jago and Banichi—and that was, perhaps, a chance; but out-muscling two strong atevi who stood head and shoulders taller than he did, who loomed over him and laid hands on his arms as he got up from the chair … that hardly felt like a sane chance, either.

  Cenedi looked at him, and said nothing as they took him out into the dim hall. They were taking him further back into Malguri’s farther wing, outside the territory he knew, farther and farther from the outside door, and he had at least a notion Banichi might be on the grounds, if Cenedi had told the truth, working wherever the power lines came into the building. He might reach Banichi, at least raise an alarm—if he could overpower two atevi, three, counting Cenedi, and one had better count Cenedi.

  And get out of Cenedi’s hearing.

  “I need the restroom,” he said, planting his feet, his heart beating like a hammer. It was stupid, but after two cups of tea, it was also the truth. “Just wait a damned minute, I need the restroom.…”

  “Restroom,” one said, and they brought him further down the hall to a backstairs room he judged must be under his own accommodation, and no more modern.

  The one shut the outside door. The other stayed close to him, and stood by while he did what he’d complained he needed to, and washed his hands and desperately measured his chances against them. It had been a long time since he’d studied martial arts, a long time since he’d last worked out, and not so long for them, he was certain of that. He walked back toward the door in the hope the one would make the mistake of opening it in advance of him—the man didn’t, and that moment of transition was the only and last chance. He jabbed an elbow into the man at his left, tried to come about for a kick to clear the man from the door, and knew he was in trouble the split second before he found his wrist and his shoulder twisted around in a move that could break his arm.

  “All right, all right,” he gasped, then had the unforgiving stone wall against the side of his face and found the breath he desperately needed to draw brought that trapped arm closer to breaking.

  A lot of breathing then, theirs, his. The venue didn’t lend itself to complex reasoning, or argument about anything but the pain. He felt a cord come around his wrist, worse and worse, and he made another try at freeing himself as the one man opened the bathroom door. But the cord and the twist and lock on his arm gave the other guard a compelling argument.

  He went where they wanted: it was all he could do—a short walk down the hall and to a doorway with lamplit stone steps leading downward to a basement he hadn’t known existed in Malguri. “I want to talk to Banichi,” he said at the top step, and balked.

  Which convinced him they had no idea of the fragility of human joints and the guard was imminently, truly going to break the arm. He tried to take the step and missed it, lost his balance completely, and the guard shoved him along regardless, using the arm for leverage until he got his feet marginally under him and made the next several steps down on his own. Vision blurred, a teary haze of lamplight from a single hanging source. Stone walls, no furniture but that solitary, hanging oil lamp and a table and chair. Thunder shook the stones, even this deep into the rock, seeming like a last message from the outside world. There was another doorway, open on a dark corridor. They shoved him at it.

  There wasn’t any help. Unless Banichi was on some side of this he couldn’t figure, there wasn’t going to be any. He’d lost his best bid, thrown it away in a try at fighting two atevi hand to hand—but if he could get leverage to get free … before they could get a door shut on him—and he could get the door behind them shut—

  It wasn’t a good chance. It wasn’t any chance. But he was desperate as they took him aside, through a door into a dark cell with no light except from the room down the hall. He figured they meant to turn him loose here, and he prepared to come back at them, duck low and see if he could get past them.

  But when the guard let go, he kept the wrist cord, swung him about by that and backed him against the wall while his fellow grabbed the other arm. He kicked and got a casual knee in the gut for his trouble, the atevi having their hands full.

  “Don’t,” that one said, while he was trying to get his wind back. “No more, do you hear me?”

  After which they hooked his feet out from under him, stretched his one arm out along a metal bar, w
hile the second guard pulled the other arm in the other direction, and tied it tight with cord from wrist to elbow.

  For most of it, he was still trying to breathe—damned mess, was all he could think, over and over, classic atevi way of handling a troublesome case, only the bar wasn’t average human height and he couldn’t get his knees on the ground or his feet under him. Just not damned comfortable, he thought—couldn’t get out of it by any means he could think of—couldn’t even find a place to put his knees to protect vital parts of his body from the working-over he expected.

  But they went away and left him instead, without a word, only brushing off their hands and dusting their clothes, as if he had ruffled their dignity. He dreaded their shutting the door and leaving him in the dark … but they left it as it was, so there was an open door within sight, and their shadows retreating on the hall floor outside. He heard their voices echoing, the two of them talking about having a drink, in the way of workmen with a job finished.

  He heard them go away up the steps, and heard the door shut.

  After that was—just—silence.

  They had told him at the very outset of his training, that if the situation ever really blew up like this, suicide was a job requirement. They didn’t want a human in atevi hands spilling technological information ad lib and indefinitely—a very serious worry early on, when atevi hadn’t reached the political stability they had had for a century, and when rivalry between associations had been a constant threat to the Treaty … oh, no, it couldn’t happen, not in remotest imagination.

  But they still taught the course—he knew a dozen painless methods—and they still said, if there was no other option, take it—because there was no rescue coming and no way anyone would risk the peace to bring him out.

  Not that there was much he could tell anybody, except political information against Tabini. Technology nowadays was so esoteric the paidhi didn’t know it until he had his briefing on Mospheira, and he worked at it until he could translate it and make sense of it to atevi experts. There was no way they could beat atomic secrets out of him, no more than he could explain trans-light technology.