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 receptionc 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 received 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 powerc 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 foreignersc 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.