Inheritor

by C. J. Cherryh

  That was as serious as it could get. A Guild not once but twice now had ill-served the aiji. If that was not a fatal offense in Tabini's book, he feared it was hedging very close on one, that was one thing, and he didn't want to see a contest of power inside the administration, or Tabini using the Assassins against the Messengers.

  But equally serious, that particular information flow, from the ship through Mogari-nai and on to Shejidan — was usually diagrams, data, and handbooks. There were, however, other kinds of information: Jase's message. God knew what.

  He knew there was somebody, at least one person, that was not the ordinary ateva, and probably at Mogari-nai, sitting there and reading what came down. It struck him like a lightning stroke that it would make sense that that person be one of the Messengers' Guild, not the Assassins' Guild that regularly guarded the aiji. It was not in his knowledge to whom the Messengers' Guild reported.

  But having delivered that bit of information, Banichi went off about his business.

  And Jase, when he went back to check on him, seemed to have focused himself on the library and was working, so he supposed Jase had reached some point of stability.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 12

  « ^ »

  The paidhi had, however, after trying to deal with Jase, an actual routine working day to begin, it being toward afternoon. He had to deal with the records and reports to his own office that he'd brought back from the plant tour, those that hadn't gone to Tabini's staff.

  He had letters to write, fulfilling promises he'd made in more cities and townships than he could conveniently recall.

  He had a computer full of files with unresolved requests, some of which he could perhaps put into other hands, but first he had to sort those things out, at his classified level, to discover what he could move on to other desks.

  And he had a stack of raw notes he had tried to keep in a notebook, but which had ended up on small pieces of paper borrowed from various sources, a shaggy affair he would have to turn over to the clericals in his office for what they could do for him, once he had been through it to be sure there was nothing tucked into that notebook that didn't belong to that level of security. He thought he'd retrieved everything, but regarding that particular notebook, which had followed him closely through various sensitive laboratories, he wasn't sure.

  So. The Jase matter was, thank God, at rest. Not settled. But at rest. He'd done what he could; he humanly wished he could do more. He wished in the first place that he'd been able to get personally closer to Jase. Jase wanted to keep his own observations and reports to his superiors clear and objective, he was sure, and Jase always held him at arms' length — so he didn't have that kind of closeness that would have let him step in and offer… whatever people offered one another at such a time. He was sad about Jase being sad; he was disturbed about it; it made him think uncomfortable thoughts about mortality and his own scattered family; and he was, considering Jase's temper, uneasy about Jase's ability to deal with the isolation and the sense of loss together.

  Hell of a homecoming, in short. A household in disarray. If he started worrying about it — and about security lapses, information gaps — well, that wouldn't persist.

  Banichi and Jago hadn't been here. Good as Tano and Algini were, they weren't as good, and problems had crept in. People hadn't told them things they should have known.

  Banichi and Jago were on it. Things would get right.

  Meanwhile there wasn't anything more he could do than he'd done, there wasn't any more he could learn about Jase's situation than he'd learned, nothing more he could feel than he'd felt, and at this point, if Jase had settled on dealing with it alone, he could just retreat to a distance and be sure Jase was really all right, that was all.

  Chasing down the other problems that might impinge on Jase's situation was Banichi's business. The files —

  — were his.

  So he settled into the sitting room, asked the servants to have one of the junior security staff bring his computer and his notes to him, and spread out his traveling office for the first uninterrupted work he'd gotten done since the plane flight.

  The simple, mind-massaging routine of translation had its pleasures. There were days on which he liked pushing the keys on the computer as long as it produced known, predictable results.

  A servant came in to ask what sort of supper he'd wish. He asked them to consult Jase about what he

  wanted and to go by that if Jase wanted anything formal, but by his preference he wanted a very light supper: he'd been on the banquet circuit, and he'd gone back to a sedentary life in which he preferred a lighter diet, thank you. Jase, he was relatively sure, was not in a mood for a heavy meal.

  To his mild surprise Jase came to the door and said the staff was asking about supper and what would he prefer. He really hadn't expected Jase to surface at all; but Jase came voluntarily to him, being sociable, and seemed to be holding onto things fairly well, considering.

  "I'll join you, if you like," Bren said.

  "That would be fine," Jase said, "nadi. Shall I arrange it with the staff?"

  "Do, please, nadi-ji." He had a lap full of carefully arranged computer and notes. He considered a how are you? and settled on "Thank you."

  "I'll do that," Jase said, and went away to the depths of the apartment where one could ordinarily find the staff.

  So it was a supper with him and Jase alone, the security staff otherwise occupied. Jase was somber, but in better spirits, even offering a little shaky, unfeigned laughter in recounting things that had gone on during his absence, chiefly the matter of a security alert when the lily workmen's scaffold had jammed and they'd had to get the Bu-javid fire rescue service to get the workmen back to the roof.

  "We couldn't get the security expansion panel down," madam Saidin added to the account, herself serving the main dish, "because Guild security wouldn't permit that. So there they were: the workmen had two of the porcelains with them on the scaffold, so they wouldn't risk those. And the artist came down to the garden below and began shouting at them that they shouldn't put the lilies in a bucket, which was what the firemen proposed —"

  "God."

  "The hill is tilted there," Jase ventured. He meant the hill was steep: but he was close to the meaning. "And the ladder wouldn't go there."

  "They ended up letting firemen down on ropes to take the porcelains," madam Saidin said, "so they could get the porcelains to safety. But meanwhile the artist was locked out of the building and stranded herself on the hill in the garden — she is an elderly lady — and she had to be rescued, which took more permissions to bring someone through the doors below from the outside."

  "Bu-javid security," Jase said, "was not happy."

  Bren could laugh at that — it was not, he was certain, a story which had amused lord Tatiseigi, whose sense of humor was likely wearing thin; but if an Atageini such as madam Saidin could laugh, then they all could, and he could imagine Damiri involved — from her balcony next door, if security had let her past the door.

  But Jase seemed worn and tired, and declared at the end of the meal that he had rather spend his evening studying and turn in early.

  "Are you all right?" Bren asked in Mosphei'.

  "Fine," Jase said. "But I didn't sleep much last night."

  "Or the nights before, I'd imagine."

  "Nor the nights before," Jase agreed. "But I will tonight."

  "Good," he said. "Good. If you need anything, don't hesitate to wake me."

  "I'll be fine," Jase said. "Good night."

  They'd occasionally talked in the evenings, but mostly it was lessons. Sometimes they watched television, for the news, or maybe a machimi play, which was a good language lesson. He'd expected, with supper, to need to keep Jase busy, and had asked after the television schedule, which did have a play worth watching this evening.

  But there was no shortage of work for either of them, and without work there was worry: Bren understood that much very well. I
f Jase felt better sitting in the library and chasing references and doing a little translation, he could understand that.

  Himself, he went back to the sitting room, deciding that he would deal with the correspondence, finally, now that he'd dulled his mind with a larger supper than he'd intended, and now that his brain had grown too tired to deal with new things.

  Top of the correspondence list was the request from the pilots, who were trying to form a Guild. The Assassins, the Messengers, the Physicians, and the Mathematicians were Guilds. There were no other professions, since the Astronomers were discredited nearly two hundred years ago. And now the pilots, who had heard of such a guild among humans, were applying to the legislatures for that status on the ground that atevi could not deal with humans at disadvantage — but they were meeting opposition from the Guilds and from traditionalists in the legislature who thought they weren't professional. The pilots, who had never enjoyed Guild status, were incensed at the tone of the reply.

  On the other side, the legislature wanted justification for the sacrosanctity and autonomy that a Guild enjoyed, when they did nothing that regarded confidentiality, which was the essence of a Guild.

  That was one problem. Tossing into it Banichi's information, there were interface problems with other Guilds, and the question of how such a Guild would relate to, say, the Messengers — who argued at length that the pilots in question might fit within their Guild structure since they traveled and carried messages.

  Like hell, was the succinct version of the pilots' opinion, as it came to his ears.

  To add to the mix, a fact which he knew and others might not, there was serious talk this winter of the Astronomers attempting to regain their position as a Guild, but as Tabini put it, their Guild status had originally been based on their predictive ability, and getting into that now-antiquated forecasting function would touch off a storm of controversy among several atevi philosophies, which on one level was ludicrous, but which to believers was very serious and which, to politicians, signaled real trouble.

  The pilots wanted him to write a recommendation to the aiji and to the legislature — and there was, additionally, a letter from the head of the Pilots' Association stating that they accepted the use of computers on his recommendation that they would prove necessary (this had been a very difficult matter) and hoping again, since he had supported the paidhi in that situation, that the paidhi would grant his support in their cause.

  The fact was, he did take the Guild status seriously — for reasons he didn't quite want to make clear to the pilots involved.

  Yet.

  They were, assuredly, going to enjoy a certain importance once the earth-to-orbit craft was flying; and once the coming and going became frequent; but more than that — more than that, he began to think, the computer programs the pilots right now disdained were ultimately going to be run by atevi computer programs, using atevi grasp of mathematics.

  And in that respect he could see where it was going to go over a horizon he couldn't see past, into mathematical constructs where a lot of atevi couldn't follow, arcane mysteries that might totally confound a set of philosophies built on mathematical systems. And responsible handling of that might be far more important to atevi than any reason these men and women yet saw.

  Aiji-ma, he wrote somberly, these pilots will in years to come work closely with the Mathematicians' Guild and with the Astronomers in whatever capacity the Astronomers enjoy at that time. I believe in due consideration that there will be reasons to facilitate exchange of information at Guild level. I know that I, being human, only imperfectly comprehend the advantages and disadvantages of a change from professional Association to Guild, but there may be special circumstances which will place these persons in possession of sensitive information which I think your greater wisdom and atevi sensibilities alone can decide.

  Let me add, however, that the term Guild as atevi apply it is not the human model; and this should be

  considered: it came to be among the most divisive issues of the human-against-human quarrel that sent humans down to the planet.

  There was a human named Taylor once, when the ship was lost in deepest space and far from any planet. Taylor's crew gave their lives to fuel the ship and get it to a safer harbor. The sons and daughters of the heroes, as I was taught was the case, gained privilege above all other humans, used their privilege and special knowledge ruthlessly, and attempted to hold other humans to the service of their ship, a matter of very bitter division.

  He stopped writing — appalled at the drift of what he was admitting to atevi eyes, to an ateva who was working to his own people's advantage far above any theoretical interest he held in humans — an ateva whose feelings about the matter he couldn't begin to judge, no more than he could expect Tabini or even himself accurately to judge the feelings of humans dead two hundred and more years ago.

  He was appalled at how far he'd forgotten the most basic rules in dealing with atevi. He security-deleted what he'd just written, wiped every possible copy, and then grew so insecure about his fate and that of the computer he wasn't sure humans had told him the truth about a security-delete.

  The room after that was quiet. There was the dark outside the windows. There was the hush in a household trying not to disturb those doing work they generally couldn't discuss. There was the burden of knowing — and not being able to talk about things.

  Never being able to talk. Or relax. Or go out of that mode of thought that continually analyzed, looked for source, looked for effect.

  Looked for ulterior motive.

  And he was on the verge of making stupid, stupid mistakes.

  He needed a human voice, that was what. He badly needed to touch something familiar. He needed to see something familiar — just to know — that things he remembered were still there.

  He folded up the computer, got up, walked back to the office, quietly so. Jase was still in the library, reading, but Jase didn't look up as he shut the office door.

  And dammit, no, Jase wasn't the prop to lean on. A human born lightyears from the planet wasn't it. A man under Jase's level of stress wasn't it. He didn't need to dump all his concerns on anybody.

  He just needed — he needed just to hear the voices, that was all. Just needed, occasionally, to hear the accents he knew, and the particular human voices he'd grown up with, and even — he could be quite brutally honest about it — to get mad enough at his family to want to hang up, if that was what it took to armor him for another three months of his job. He loved them. He was technically allowed to say the fatal word love in their instance, angry and desperate as they could make him.

  Maybe, he thought, that was the part of his soul that needed exercising. Maybe it was hearing Jase talking to his mother. Maybe it was the self-chastisement that maybe he ought to make peace with his own family, and not carry on the war they'd been fighting.

  Maybe it was the definite knowledge that his mother had justification for complaints against her son. It came to him with peculiar force that he'd been blaming her for her frustration when it was the same frustration and anger the whole island of Mospheira was likely feeling with him, and showing to his mother by harassing her sleep. He couldn't explain his position to her, hell, he couldn't explain it to himself on bad days, and now she had health problems the stresses of his job weren't helping at all.

  Not mentioning the mess he'd put his brother and his family in.

  At least he could call. At least he could make the gesture and try to plead again that he couldn't come back and turn over the job to Deana Hanks, which was his alternative.

  Jase didn't look up. The hall was shadowed: possibly Jase didn't notice him at all. Or thought he was being checked on by security or one of the servants — or by him — and purposefully didn't notice.

  He went to the little personal office instead, picked up the phone and, through the Bu-javid operator, put through a call into the Mospheiran phone network, which got a special operator on the other side. Checking the
time, he put through a call to his brother Toby's house.

  "This number is no longer a valid number. Please contact the operator."

  "I'm sorry," the Mospheiran operator said coldly, cutting in. "There's a recording."

  I know there's a damn recording! was what he wanted to say. Instead, he said, reasonably, "Call Bre-tano City Hospital. My mother's a patient there."

  There wasn't even a courtesy Yes, Mr. Cameron. The operator put the call through, got the desk, a clerk, the supervisor:

  "We have no Ms. Cameron listed as a patient."

  "They say," the operator said, "they have no Ms. Cameron listed."

  He didn't want to call the Foreign Office. He had a short list of permitted persons he could call as paidhi without going through the Foreign Office or higher. And he was down to the last ones. His mother's home phone didn't work during the evening hours: the phone company had blocked incoming service because of phone threats. Toby might be there. His mother might be. Possibly she'd come home from the hospital and Toby might have taken his entire family there because he didn't dare leave the kids or his wife alone back at their house. Damn the crawling cowards that made it necessary!

  "All right. Get me Barbara Letterman," he said to the operator. "She's married to Paul Saarinson."

  "I don't have authorization for a Paul Saarinson's residence."

  "You have —" He made a conscious effort to keep his language free of epithets. "— authorization for Letterman. She is the same Barb Letterman. She has a State Department clearance to talk to me. She hasn't changed her clearance. She just got married."

  "I can only go by the list, sir. You'll have to contact the State Department. I can put you through to that number."