That station had been aware when any door had opened, and when anyone left and whether they had come back safely—and they had learned to get by it, getting out. There was, in fact, exactly such a station in mani-ma’s very apartment, right down the hall, where now his father’s people were in charge—it was very great trust for mani to let his father’s very new staff handle that equipment. And that might even argue that mani had gotten one of her own people into his father’s staff.
Probably she had. He bet she had. Such things certainly went on, as Uncle had wanted him to have Atageini among his guards, not trusting the Taibeni, oh, no, not with centuries of bloodshed between Atageini and Taibeni. And then mani had gotten her own two guards in because she wanted to watch the ones Uncle sent.
And that meant if he was going to get information and get him and his staff in and out past his father’s security, he had to figure on Great-grandmother’s staff and on Great-uncle’s, too— but they would be busy watching each other.
He was supposed to be learning. He certainly was.
Getting information out of his father’s security station, which was always manned, meant getting it out on two legs. And that meant getting Antaro or Jegari or someone into position to find out things. Antaro and Jegari’s age, and most of all their status as non-Guild, made that all but impossible. And if they were to take Guild training, which Banichi said they could do, that would take them away from him just when he needed them desperately.
Damn, Bren would say. That was no good.
Freedom such as he had enjoyed on the ship was going to take some work. Phone-tapping could be useful, but it never would give them things that flowed on the house system, he was sure of that.
But he had not set everything on that plan. He was working on other projects, and Jegari and Antaro had in fact slipped out on his orders—to all appearances, they had simply walked out, on the legitimate excuse of visiting relatives in the hotel down at the base of the hill. And because he was sure at least Great-uncle’s people were watching his staff for misdeeds (Atageini never trusted Taibeni) he had told the two of them to get their cousins to go out shopping down the hill. And they were to bring back ordinary things like clothes to wrap the electronic items and tools they needed and were going to buy at the same time. It was amazing how hard it was to get a simple screwdriver in this place.
He, meanwhile, was mapping out the pipes and conduits, and doing it mostly in his head, because Uncle’s staff was large-eyed, and, he suspected, reporting everything.
Perhaps Uncle’s staff reported he was a zealous student, spending a great deal of time in the library—where staff did let him go with only Jegari and Antaro in attendance, because the apartment and the library were in the same secure area.
Perhaps the librarians reported he had a fascination with engineering and history. Both were true, so far as the plumbing and electrification of the Bu-javid went. He had pulled down every book on the building’s history he could find, there being no manuals to show how things were now. There had used to be a gas system, but it was disconnected. There had used to be fireplaces, but they were in disuse, and many had been walled up, their flues—that was the word—still there, sometimes converted to bring in fresh air to the ventilation systems, but often just remaining hollow spaces behind masonry or panelsc which was why certain places were spying-spots, and you could hear things that came through the old conduits: a number of these had been filled in, and people who worried about security worried about those things.
The history of the Bu-javid was, in fact, a long, long chronicle of modifications and reapportionment of space. The kitchens had lost their hand-elevators when one had been used in the assassination of a lord of Segari, a hundred years ago. Now food came up by the main elevators. The stairs that servants used, some of which did interconnect, or had used to interconnect, had also used to have guards.
Now the various establishments in the building all had security systems like the ship. Also servant passages no longer interconnected with those of allied staffs as they once had. Such connections were bricked up, but they were still only a wall away in some cases, and if they had been reestablished in certain instances, no one outside a given household would likely know it until that apartment came up for reallocation. To this day, there was officially no interconnection between apartmentsc that anyone admittedc and there definitely was, if one read the records for hints. He had tried to explore all of the servant passages, but there were doors that locked, and one supposed it was part of security—but he had no key. That was inconvenient. There were stairs that went down a whole other level, and met a door, and he had no idea where that went. That was locked.
It was, of course, safer to have both guards and electronics. And it did seem that industrious security might have installed modern listening devices right at those points where passages had once connected. Some such devices the ship used had been very sophisticated at picking up conversations much farther than anyone would think. He would bet, in fact, that some things his father used would make it a good idea to do any verbal scheming well away from the Bu-javid.
But he was teaching his staff kyo and Mosphei’ for communication emergencies. He knew some of the Guild handsigns, and taught them. Antaro and Jegari had other signs they had used in hunting. They were teaching him those. They had their own language.
He was personally, too, getting much faster at skimming text in Ragi, in his library sessions: Antaro and Jegari scanned things so slowly and methodically—but he could find the word “passage” or “stairs” or “water” with one glance at a page.
It was curious, was it not? The word for electricity was that for fire in a wire. It was curious that the word for pump was really two words that meant stream and lift. Humans had given their technology to atevi after they had lost the War of the Landing, step by step, so as not to disturb the economy or wreck the environment, but atevi had not brought the human word across with any item until just very recently, when a few Mosphei’ words had begun to describe things like computer parts.
Interesting. Interesting. That change had happened during Bren’s service as paidhi. Bren had changed things, and let that happen, and the whole world had sped up.
And it had all happened during his father’s regime. Never before.
The technology had come in so fast, with computers and spaceships and all—it was like Cook’s bread when the yeast set to work. It was one little bit, and then it was huge, all of a sudden.
If Uncle Tatiseigi had been aiji instead, no Mosphei’ words would have gotten in at all, but his father had let it happen, and let technology just explode all over the place, because humans were taking over the space station and if his father had not gotten atevi their own shuttles, and trained the only pilots, humans would run everything up there. Now they shared the station with atevi, and atevi were even building a starship of their own.
But the changes down here in the world had upset a lot of people like Uncle Tatiseigi, and Murini had gotten a lot of those upset people together, particularly from the south and among Uncle Tatiseigi’s neighbors, to overthrow his father.
And what did they think they were going to do, then? Break all the computers and turn off the televisions? That would upset everybody else, who were not happy with southerners running everything.
Mostly the overthrow had let Murini sit in Shejidan and take revenge on his enemies before they got to him. Murini had never built anything or done anything good.
So the moment it was clear Great-grandmother was back from space and his father had help enough to take the government back, everybody ran out in the streets and cheered.