Deliverer

by C. J. Cherryh

  “One is extremely distressed,” Bren said, “to have been an utter fool, Banichi-ji. The Messenger’s presence—”

  “That man has passed clearances to deal with the aiji’s messages,” Banichi said. “But we take nothing for granted, Bren-ji. Your boat is awaiting orders. Tano and Algini are already at the airport. Our immediate plan is for them to go out and bring nand’ Toby in to your estate quietly if at all possible, and not have him exposed in the long crossing.”

  He drew an easier breath. “Nadiin-ji, words cannot express—”

  “Tano and Algini will use the young aiji’s fish for a code word.”

  That lethal catch of Cajeiri’s, that had flown all about the vicinity on a wildly swaying line. Only someone who had been on that deck would know that reference.

  “Excellent.” Tano and Algini could function in Mosphei’, at least, and he hoped fish was among the words they knew: Toby’s grasp of Ragi was limited. But he was immensely relieved, all the same.

  “We updated the estate staff’s codes four days ago,” Jago said very quietly.

  And they could communicate with less prospect of having their code cracked. Such efficiency was like them. He could only wish he had matched their precautions.

  Soft-headedness. Too much reliance on staff to think of things. A steel environment that simply didn’t change, while the universe ripped past at mind-blurring speed.

  “One is immensely grateful,” he said. “Well covered, nadiin-ji. Well covered.”

  Jago quietly poured a brandy at the sideboard and offered it to him.

  He took it. His lapse had taken his innermost staff down to two, again, and settled work on their shoulders. He owed it to them to sit down and accept that they had things in hand.

  “Sit with me,” he asked them, “if I have given you the leisure to do so, nadiin-ji.”

  They settled, Banichi with an unreadable expression—one had the faintest notion it was tolerant amusement.

  “Brandy if you wish,” he said.

  “We remain on duty, Bren-ji,” Jago said.

  “And I have immensely complicated your problems,” he said. “You know where he is.”

  “With reasonable accuracy, given Jase-aiji’s information,” Banichi said. “But well that we do know, and well that we move quickly. We shall reach him, Bren-ji. We shall use every persuasion to bring him to the coast.”

  “Every persuasion,” Jago echoed, meaning, he was sure, a modicum of force, if need be, to overcome Toby’s presidential orders. Toby knew Tano and Algini, once they were face-to-face. He would trust them. So it would be all right—better that they learned where Toby was than to let some dissident faction find out and set out after him, them and Toby none the wiser: seeing what Banichi meant in that well that we do know, Bren let the brandy warm his stomach, and let go a pent breath.

  “One trusts,” he said, “one trusts, then, that everything possible is being done. My gratitude, nadiin-ji, my gratitude to Tano and Algini, and please express it to them, if you can. One also understands,” he added, because the amount of distress his security would bear if anything did go wrong at this point was beyond easy expression, “one clearly understands that Toby’s position is fraught with hazards by no means within our control. Baji-naji, we will win this throw.”

  “We are closer,” Banichi pointed out, “than any potential enemy in the south. And we have the estate staff already at hand.”

  “True,” he said, and had a second sip, feeling better. “What a morning, nadiin-ji! But the young gentleman is behind doors, we are fairly well toward reaching my brother, and one is extremely glad to have the dish up again.—May one ask, nadiin-ji, what Jase-aiji meant? What is this, dropping equipment?”

  There were looks, a little reserve. That was unusual.

  “Are these things the paidhi-aiji needs to know?” Bren asked, “And are these matters the aiji himself does not know?”

  “Possibly he does not,” Banichi said judiciously. “We do not know, ourselves, the nature of these devices dropped. The equipment came with Tano and Algini. We have carried it throughout, but not turned it on—on their advice, not relying on any outside gift, and not having any assurance of all its capabilities, in the haste of our departure, and in an uncertain situation. We do not trust without knowledge.”

  “It is much the same as location on the ship,” Jago said, “but we are told they can locate a position for the user anywhere in the world, relative to a map. If it had seemed useful at any point, for the ship to know precisely where we were, we understand we might have provided that location. But we never used it. We have no knowledge how they have tracked Murini, or if they have means to do so, but until we have heard nand’ Jase’s voice, we have had no assurance how things stand aboard the station, or whether nand’ Sabin has resumed authority. That is the sum of it, Bren-ji. Since we have never doubted where we were, we have never used them.”

  Understandable that his security, with enough on their hands, was not relying on some untested system handed by authorities aloft…not when, until now, they had had no way to be sure who was in charge up there.

  “Are they with you now, nadiin-ji? Or did they go with Tano and Algini?”

  “Tano and Algini have two. We have three.”

  Three. “And the landings?”

  “We have no knowledge of those,” Banichi said, “nor have Tano and Algini mentioned any such thing, Bren-ji. We do not believe they would have failed to say if they had any such information.”

  Considering the sieve that was Tatiseigi’s security net, and the way their communications had fed into the enemy’s, entirely understandable his security had wanted to trust only what they knew…knowing there was very little the station could do to assist them, without some dramatic action that might scare off the people that were moved to rejoin Tabini-aiji….

  Thank God they hadn’t dropped anything in on Tatiseigi’s estate. Half the force gathered there would have run for the hills.

  But they were a different issue than this equipment Tano and Algini had brought with them…like the locators they’d used on the station and the ship.

  The network that would have to support it—if not the landed devices—was a staggering implication. Satellites. A grid all over the globe.

  “Do you suppose Presidenta Tyers has such devices provided him,” he asked, thoughts cascading through his mind on various tracks, “and that he provided the same to Toby? Were we tracked?”

  “Certainly we did not have any knowledge of it,” Banichi said, “but did not the Presidenta have access to the shuttle crew? Clearly, he might have received such equipment at that time, and he might have had some understanding with nand’ Toby—which we were not told, for reasons of security.”

  “If the Presidenta involved my household in some dangerous enterprise, he could have told me,” Bren muttered, and added: “But so could my brother have told me, nadiin-ji.”

  “Toby-nandi surely knows what you and we would say to his involvement, Bren-ji,” Jago said, not without dark humor. “But one doubts he would be dissuaded by the Presidenta or by the paidhi-aiji.”

  It was true. It was damned well true of Toby. “Well, so, what are these things, ’Nichi-ji? Entirely like the locators?”

  “A network, nandi, and since communication with the station requires somewhat more power than our ordinary equipment provides—one does conceive the notion that these reported devices dropped here and there by parachute may be connected to this system, perhaps supplying power to transmit.”

  “Communication without Mogari-nai. But no vocal capability.”

  “One suspects, at least, that the system is more than reception…since they claim to know where nand’ Toby is.”

  “Curious. And I was not to know.”

  “One believes, Bren-ji, that there was some amount of secrecy connected to its usefulness,” Jago said, “perhaps that it is something already known to Mospheira, about which they might have advised us—but we rec
eived no information there, either. Tano and Algini themselves suggested we refrain from using them—they foresaw a certain doubt about the station-aiji and the ship-aijiin, whether we might rely on them.”

  Guild reticence. Guild suspicion. Some third party gave them equipment, and damned right they weren’t going to use it unquestioned.

  But there were those who would.

  “If Tyers has it, the island might manufacture it, given their communication with the station has never faltered.” The picture began to come clear to him, that Shawn’s administration might well have had a global mapping project going with the station, at least from the time the aishidi’tat fragmented itself and Tabini left power…Shawn, damn his hide, had been tracking things, had been in close communication with the station, and had neglected to discuss that system with his former employee—namely him? Ogun had provided his staff with the equipment, maybe not telling Shawn that they were doing it? And Shawn didn’t tell them if they were being tracked from orbit, given the things might be two-way?

  Oh, things were in their usual tangle of suspicion.

  Trust had broken down completely, was what. Bet on it. Murini had been in charge, at that hour, and Tabini’s retaking the capital had not even been on the horizon when Tano and Algini had come into possession of these tracking devices. Shawn might have assumed they were going to set the dowager and the boy in the aijinate. And damned sure Shawn had sweated when they’d crossed the water and stayed untrackable.

  He understood why his bodyguard hadn’t wanted to turn the equipment on—with all it potentially connected to. He wasn’t that anxious to use it himself, not utterly understanding what it did, or who it informed.

  But if Toby was on the system—somehow—

  And if Jase was in a position of authority up above and Ogun was playing straight with Jase and Sabin—

  “Pacts,” he said, “pacts apparently exist between Shawn Tyers’ government and the station. They’ve permitted the installation of this equipment. Tyers very likely knows. And the station possibly violated secrecy in giving these units to Tano and Algini—considering the mess we were going into. Considering that the dowager might end up ruling the aishidi’tat, with whom it could be argued certain treaties had been trampled on—the station did not want us to feel betrayed by this system. And Shawn, for whatever reason, would not breach security to inform us this was going on—possibly because he thought he was doing enough putting it in Toby’s hands, possibly against agreements he had with the station, perhaps otherwise. Toby didn’t tell us, because Shawn had asked him not to. He is the Presidenta. He would have argued with Toby that it was best I not know—because he was asking Toby to undertake a second mission he had no wish for me to know about. And Tyers may or may not know you have that equipment now. One would expect he does know—if Jase has been telling him all he knows. But Tyers may not have the capacity to track—if it exists. That ability may reside only with the station, from their vantage, with their receivers.”

  “Humans,” Banichi said dourly, “can be puzzling.”

  “No man’chi, nadiin-ji. Toby knew I would argue to the contrary. And Toby wished to do this, for his own pride.”

  There was no atevi word for a person who would step outside man’chi, defy a prestigious relative, and seek personal risk because he’d been waiting for a chance like that all his cautious life. No word, but Toby, damn it all.

  So neither the station nor the island had been idle while the continent had been under Murini’s rule—they’d been working hand over fist to do something. Those landers out there were for something, and there were satellites up there tracking them—had to be.

  And if local farmers took to hacking up the mysterious landers with axes—that was not a desirable situation, either—no knowing what contamination they might let loose, for one unhappy result. But there were others possible. Deaths. Resentment. Suspicion—that he had to answer, somehow, when neither the station authorities nor his former President had leaped to provide him answers.

  He had an inkling what the mix was that had given his bodyguard pause—the certain sense there was something human going on, and that if they just didn’t turn the damned things on, they could postpone upsetting the paidhi-aiji and adding one more vector to the problems of the aishidi’tat. Just settle it on the atevi plane, first. Then let the paidhi-aiji take on the foreigners…

  Let the paidhi-aiji get the truth out of the station-aijiin.

  Let Tabini sit in authority again, and let the world get back to normal.

  He intended to have more information, from Shawn and from Jase, that was dead certain. And he wanted Toby safe, and if the station’s little secret project—spread all across atevi skies in a plethora of foreign numbers—could get Toby back to shore in one piece, good.

  Another sip of brandy.

  He was going to have to explain it to Tabini, this business of foreign equipment parachuting into local fields and frightening the wildlife. He was going to have to say that this had gone unmentioned for days, and there were installations from space dropped all over the continent, for unknown reasons.

  More, he was going to have to explain to the superstitious and the uncounted atevi institutions that humans had divided their world in numbers. God help him.

  “Did they mention anything else it would be useful for me to know, nadiin-ji?”

  “That was the sum of what we were given, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “We all kept it close. It was my own decision. It seemed a possible point of controversy, in certain quarters.”

  Understatement. And he was, Banichi had always informed him, an absolutely wretched liar, by atevi standards.

  “Perfectly understandable,” he said. “It is understandable, ’Nichi-ji: by no means trouble yourself. We both agree I do not lie well.”

  Banichi gave a visible wince. “Indeed. All the same—”

  “No fault, ’Nichi-ji, no fault at all.”

  He so rarely scored one on Banichi, and the brandy had made itself a warm spot, in a confidence that, however tangled the skeins of information around him, he had finally begun to get a real sense of what had been going on—what had been going on all during the time that Yolanda Mercheson had run for her life and the station in orbit had started cooperating closely with Shawn Tyers on measures they could take to protect their assets.

  The Treaty of the Landing had taken a beating during the last decade, but it was still what kept humans and atevi trusting one another enough to keep out of each others’ affairs, and out of each others’ territory. It was the basis of peace and order. And the station and Tyers had had something going that hammered it hard. He didn’t think Tyers would in any wise contemplate invading the mainland. Human agents on the mainland would be a little damned conspicuous.

  But Mospheira might have contemplated bringing Lord Geigi and his people down in the one shuttle they had left in orbit, and letting Geigi go after Murini.

  Now there was a thought.

  Well, thank God it hadn’t gotten to that. Thank God Tabini had stayed alive, and the relative framework of the aishidi’tat had bent, but not broken.

  A close call. None of the alternatives had been good ones. But if any had been put into play, one hoped Shawn would call them off quickly, so they could all pretend nothing had ever gone on.

  And if Toby and Tano and Algini had locators, they stood a good chance of finding each other in all that water. Dared he think that?

  He hoped so. He fervently hoped so.

  Delivered to one’s own door by Banichi.

  Escorted to one’s own chambers within those doors by his father’s bodyguard, and watched like a criminal. Cajeiri was disgusted.

  He had been so close to reaching Gene. He had talked to Jase-aiji, and when he had, all the memories of the ship had come flooding back, the very textures and smells and the details, down to the ribbing on the lights and the pattern of the floor tiles—suddenly, in his mind, he had seen Gene’s face, with his pale skin, not unpleas
ingly brown-speckled across the nose, his eyes, a remarkable muddle of gray, green, and blue—his hair, which was brown and dark, and curled generally out of control—He had already begun to lose the details he tried to hold in his head, but they were back, now. Artur’s face, narrow-nosed and with a chipped front tooth—Irene’s, dark as an ateva, but brown, and eyes darker than her face, scarily dark, full of thoughts—

  Golden eyes around him, now, two sets of purest golden eyes, worried-looking. Antaro and Jegari seemed sure they were at fault, which was absolutely stupid. It was stupid the way everyone down here seemed anxious to sop up blame when he did anything at all. For a moment overwhelming anger welled up in his throat, anger enough to strike out and break something, but mani had taught him better, so he choked it back.

  Oh, he had anger enough for a sharp word to his father’s guards out there, but mani would do far more than whack him on the ear if he let fly. If mani-ma were here, which she was not. She had deserted him, given him up to his father. Everyone had deserted him, everyone that he actually wanted to be near him, everyone but these two, who sat staring at him as if at any moment he would have some incredibly brilliant answer for their collective embarrassment.

  Banichi had not had two words for him, beyond the fact that he was delivering him to his father’s care, and that he was not to be out and about in the future without Guild in attendance. It was absolute disaster.

  And Jaidiri-nadi had shown up in person to take custody of him, and he was sure Banichi had gone back down to the party, where he would inform nand’ Bren the boy was back in his room, under guard.

  It had been fun down there until—

  Until the business with the phone call, and he had brushed past nand’ Bren, and pushed right in front of Bren’s staff—he knew better, but he had done it, and he knew he had gone far past even nand’ Bren’s patient limit. He knew what mani-ma would say about what he had done. He had known it before he did it. But the bitter truth was—he had assumed he could get away with it. He had pushed too far, and Bren, Bren, that he relied on for patience, had turned him in.