Atevi had been able to get their manufacturing geared up to handle the crisis. The island enclave of Mospheira had still been debating the matter when the atevi’s first spacecraft lifted off the runway and blasted roof tiles off the eaves of Shejidan.
Change, change, and not just change—change proceeding at breakneck speed through every aspect of atevi life. Mines and factories were opened, sudden wealth created for some districts, with shortages of critical materials and extravagant plenty of new luxuries: Mospheiran society, wrangling over regional advantage and company prerogatives, hadn’t been able to do it, even with the technological advantage. Atevi society, where a strong leader could dictate where new plants were to be built, could balance the economy of regions against regions, equalize the supply and demand—and in so doing, created new values, new economy, new emphasis on manufacturing instead of handcrafting of objects valued for centuries, not even to mention such radical notions as preserved food, instead of food auspiciously and respectfully offered in season, with awareness of one’s debt to the natural world…
Cultural change, religious change, upheaval in the relative importance of provinces and districts, not according to history but according to the mineral wealth and the siting of some new critical facility, partly by the aiji’s grace, partly by the questions of where nature had put the resources. It had all worked. It had been a toboggan ride to a brave new tomorrow, and Tabini’s brilliance had kept everyone prosperous, kept himself in charge, abandoned not a shred of his power and put down every attempt to unseat him…
And had the paidhi objected? He’d superintended Tabini’s rush to modernize, confident Tabini’s management of the economy was going to preserve the traditions as well as create new professions, new Guilds. He’d known he was riding the avalanche, and he’d thought he’d steered Tabini to safety. When the crisis came that called them out to Reunion, he’d left Tabini never more powerful, the Association never more prosperous, the atevi economically and politically equal to humans in every regard, even in relation to the ship-humans on the station. He’d left a people possessed of shuttlecraft and every functioning facility to land and service spacecraft, even building a starship of their own, while Mospheiran humans, across the straits from the mainland, dithered and debated and never had accomplished more than those modifications to the airport at Jackson that would serve as a reserve landing site in emergency… give or take the twenty feet of runway that couldn’t get past certain special interests and the Jackson Municipal Golf Course.
Humans on Mospheira had continued to have mixed feelings about the space station, that was the problem underlying Mospheiran politics. Some were extremely enthusiastic about going back to space, but more were suspicious and resentful of their cousins on the ship. And like the atevi, Mospheirans had mixed feelings, too, about the changes, the haste to turn the entire economy into a space-based push for technological equality with the ship-folk, the trampling of, well, fairly old, if not ancient traditions of Mospheiran life.
He’d foreseen all the objections. He’d hoped both Shawn Tyers, the President of Mospheira, and Tabini-aiji, head of the aishidi’tat, the atevi government, would weather all the storms of discontent at least until they’d been able to get back from their mission to Reunion and report that all this sacrifice and striving had produced a result worth having.
He seemed to have won the bet in the case of his old friend Shawn Tyers, though Shawn’s political survival when he had left had seemed more precarious. Shawn was still in office, despite the volatile politics of the island and all the pressures bearing on him.
He had been disastrously wrong, however, about the atevi side of the equation. Tabini had seemed unassailable, delicately and deftly maneuvering around difficulties, as he always had, having secured the help of such unlikely individuals as his own grandmother, the aiji-dowager, a unifying power of the far east, who might have threatened his reign. He’d begotten an heir, Cajeiri, with an Atageini woman, the Atageini, historically speaking, posing one of the greatest threats to the stability of the aishidi’tat. He’d gotten the crotchety, traditionalist head of the Atageini clan on his side. He’d put down one bad bit of trouble arising in the seafaring south and west, and engaged the gadget-loving western Lord Geigi firmly on his side, in the process, Geigi’s influence being a firm bulwark against trouble in all that curve of western coast. What more could he need than those several allies? Nothing had looked remotely likely to shake Tabini from power.
But Geigi had gone up to orbit, managing the atevi side of the station, while the son of a conspirator, allowed to prosper—Tabini, lately influenced by strong Mospheiran hints that it wasn’t proper or civilized to assassinate the relatives of people who’d tried to kill him—repaid Tabini with treachery.
Spare Murini, he’d asked Tabini. Take the chance. He’d been sensitive to the international, interspecies situation—been sensitive to any perception on the part of Mospheiran or space-faring humans that atevi were less civilized or in any way threatening to humans. Attached to the atevi court, he’d begun to take such accusations of atevi barbarism personally; he’d begun, hadn’t he, to want his atevi to have the respect of his species?
There had been a danger point, if he’d only seen it. But he hadn’t read the winds. He had committed the oldest mistake of joint civilization on the planet—getting distracted by one issue, modernizing too fast, worst of all ignoring atevi hardwiring and ignoring the point that what humans might call barbarism was part and parcel of atevi problem-solving.
What had he tried to promote among atevi? Tolerance of out-clan powers. Therefore tolerance of foreigners. How could an enlightened ruler kill the son of a traitor, simply because of his relatives?
And now that unenlightened son of a rebel, driven, perhaps, by that emotion of man’chi which humans weren’t wired to understand on a gut level, had quite naturally, from an atevi view, turned on the aiji who had spared him.
How much of the aishidi’tat had fractured when that happened? How much pent-up tension in the power structure had just snapped? Classic, absolutely classic atevi behavior.
And what could a human do to mend the damage, when the human in question had made the critical mistakes in the first place, and given his atevi superiors bad advice?
Ilisidi might, with some justification, ask for transport for herself and Tabini’s heir back to her homeland, bidding the paidhi to stay the hell on the island. She might justly tell the paidhi to give her no more advice, certainly not of the quality he’d given Tabini. She hadn’t yet mentioned the word blame, but he was sure she knew a certain amount of this situation was indeed his fault.
And there were no few atevi on the mainland who’d like to explain to him all the mistakes he’d made, he was quite sure of it. By now many of his loyal staff, maybe even Banichi and Jago themselves, were quietly questioning moves he’d made, things they’d accepted.
Now that he had an enforced time to sit and think, not even tea sat easily on his stomach, and sleep, as tired as he was, did not come, no matter how he tried, so the hours stretched on and on, in blacker and blacker thoughts. He ate a bite or two of his supper and found no desire for the rest. He drifted, belted to his seat, in a cabin never quiet—the shuttle had too many fans and pings and beeps for that—but that held a kind of a white, shapeless sound, and permitted far too much calculation.
“Bren-ji, you have not eaten,” Jago observed, loose from her seat for the moment, drifting close to him.
“Later, Jago-ji,” he said. “I shall have it later.”
At the moment he wasn’t sure he could keep another bite down.