Atevi manners didn’t approve yelling at people, either. Jago walked all the way back to answer him.
“If you wish. But what I read in the letter gives me little grounds on which to delay these people, nand’ paidhi. I can only advise Banichi of your feelings. I don’t see how I could do otherwise.”
He was at the end of his resources. He made a small, weary bow. “About what I said. I’m tired, nadi, I didn’t express myself well.”
“I take no offense, Bren-ji. The opinion of these people is uninformed. Shall I attempt to reach Banichi?”
“No,” he said in despair. “No. I’ll deal with them. Only suggest to Tabini on my behalf that he’s put me in a position which may cost me my job.”
“I’ll certainly convey that,” Jago said. And if Jago said it that way, he did believe it.
“Thank you, nadi,” he said, and Jago bowed and went on through the bedroom.
He followed, with a vacation advertisement and a crafts catalog, which he figured for bathtub reading.
Goodbye to the hour-long bath. He rang for Djinana to advise him of the change in plans, he shed the coat in the bedroom, limped down the hall into the bathroom and shed dusty, spit-stained clothes in the hamper on the way to the waiting tub.
The water was hot, frothed with herbs, and he would have cheerfully spent half the day in it, if Djinana would only keep pouring in warm water. He drowned the crafts catalog, falling asleep in mid-scan—just dropped his hand and soaked it: he found himself that tired and that little in possession of his faculties.
But of course Tano came in to say a van had pulled up in the portico, and it was television people, with Banichi, and they were going to set up downstairs. Would the paidhi care to dress?
The paidhi would care to drown, rather than put on court formality and that damned tailored coat, but Tabini had other plans.
He’d not brought his notes on the transportation problems. He thought he should have. It went to question after question, until at least numbness had set in where he met the chair and where an empty stomach protested the lack of lunch.
“What,” the interviewer asked then, “determines the rate of turnover of information? Isn’t it true that all these systems exist on Mospheira?”
“Many do.”
“What wouldn’t?”
“We don’t use as much rail. Local air is easier. The interior elevations make air more practical for us.”
“But you didn’t present that as an option to the aiji two hundred years ago.”
“We frankly worried that we’d be attacked.”
“So there areother considerations than the environment.”
Sharp interviewer. And empowered by someone to ask questions that might not make the broadcast, but—might, still. Tabini had confidence in this man, and sent him.
“There’s also the risk,” he said, “of creating problems among atevi. You had rail—you almost had rail at the time of the Landing. If we’d thrown air travel into Shejidan immediately, it might have provoked disturbances among the outlying Associations. Not everyone believed Barjida-aiji would share the technology. And better steam trains were a lot less threatening. We could have turned over rockets. We could have said, in the very first negotiations—here’s the formula for dynamite. And maybe irresponsible people would have decided to drop explosives on each other’s cities. We’d just been through a war. It was hard enough to get it stopped. We didn’t want to provide new weapons for another one. Wecould have dropped explosives from planes, when we built them. But we didn’t want to do that.”
“That’s a good point,” the interviewer said.
He hoped it was. He hoped people thought about it.
“We don’t ever want a war,” he said. “We didn’t have much choice about being on this planet. We caused harm we didn’t intend or want. It seems a fair repayment, what the Treaty asked.”
“Is there a limit to what you’ll turn over?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“What about highways?”
Damn, thatquestion again. He drew a breath to think about it. “Certainly I’ve seen the realities of transportation in the mountains. I intend to take my observations to ourcouncil. And I’m sure the nai-aijiin will have recommendations to me, too.”
A little laughter at that. And a sober next question: “Yet you alone, rather than the legislature, determine whether a town gets the transport it needs.”
“Not myself alone. In consultation with the aiji, with the councils, with the legislatures.”
“Why not road development?”
“Because—”
Because mecheiti followed the leader. Because Babs was the leader, and Nokhada hadn’t a choice, without fighting that Nokhada didn’t want, damned stupid idea, and he had to say something to that question, something that didn’t insult atevi.
“Because,” he said, trapped. “We couldn’t predict what might happen. Because we saw the difficulties of regulation.” He panicked. He was losing the threads of it, not making sense, and not making sense sounded like a lie. “We feared at the outset the allocation of road funds might cause division within the Association. A breakdown of an authority we didn’t understand.”
The interviewer hesitated, politely expressionless. “Are you saying, nand’ paidhi, that this policy was based on misapprehension?”
Oh, God. “Initially, perhaps.” The mind snapped back into focus. The villageproblem was the atevi concern. “But we don’t think it would have led to a solution for the villages. Ifthere’d been highways a hundred, two hundred years ago, there’d have been a growth in unregulated commerce. If thathad happened—the commercial interests would build where the biggest highways were, and the straighter the highways, the more big population centers in a row, the more attraction they’d be—while no one but the aiji would have defended the remote villages, who stillwould have trouble getting transportation, very much what we have now, but we’d also have the pollution from the motors and the concentration of even more political power into the major population strings, along those roads. I see a place for a road system—in the villages, not the population centers, as spur lines to the centralized transport system.”
He didn’t engage the interviewer’s interest. He’d gotten too detailed, too technical, or at least promised to lead to technical matters the interviewer didn’t want or felt his audience didn’t want. He sensed the shift in intention, as the interviewer shifted position and frowned. He was glad of it. The interviewer posed a few more questions, about where he lived, about family associations, about what he did on vacation, thank God, none of them critical. He was sweating under the lights when the interview wound to its close and the interviewer went through the obligatory courtesies.
‘Thank you, nand’ paidhi,“ the man said, and Bren withheld the sigh of relief as the lights went out.
“I’m sorry,” he said at once, “I’m not used to cameras. I’m afraid I wasn’t very coherent at all.”
“You speak very well, nand’ paidhi, muchbetter than some of our assignments, I assure you. We’re very pleased you found the time for us.” The interviewer stood up, he stood up, Banichi stood up, from the shadowed fringes, where the lights had obscured his presence. Everyone bowed. The interviewer offered a hand to shake. Someone must have told him that.
“You’ve been informed on our customs,” he ventured to say, and the interviewer was pleased and bowed, shaking hands with a crushing grip.
There was the commercial plane returning at sunset. The news crew had another assignment in Maidingi, on the electrical outage. Thank God. The crew was packing up lights, disconnecting cable run like an infestation of red and black vines across the ancient carpets, from the remote hallways. Maigi went to retrieve the far end somewhere near the kitchens, where, Bren was sure, the staff was not eager to admit strangers. Everything folded away into boxes, The glass-eyed animals stared back from the walls, as amazed and dazed as the paidhi.