“In the cellar,” Jago said.
“Under the building. It’s a damned bomb, nadi. The place needselectric furnaces. If they’ve installed electric lights, surely electric furnaces can’t hurt.”
“Funding,” Jago said.
“While they’re looking for assassins—do they watch that tank?”
“Every access to this building,” Jago said, “is under surveillance.”
“Except when the power’s out.”
Jago made a small shrug.
“Those windows,” he said, “aren’t watched. I found that out last night, when the power came back on.”
Jago frowned, went close to the window, and ran a finger around the edge of the casement, looked up and around—at what, he couldn’t see.
“How did you find out, Bren-ji?”
“I opened a window to look out. The power came back on. The alarm went off. I take it that’s an old system.”
“It certainly is,” Jago said. “Did you report this?”
“It woke the whole staff.”
Jago didn’t look happier, but what she saw, examining the window, he couldn’t tell.
“Except Banichi,” he said.
“Except Banichi.”
“I don’t know where he was. I told you. We had an argument. He went off somewhere.” He had an entirely unwelcome thought but kept his mouth shut on it, watched while Jago walked to the door, pulled it half-shut, and looked at the wall behind it, still frowning. Security didn’ttalk about security. He doubted an explanation was forthcoming.
“Nadi Jago,” he said. “Banichi wasn’t here. Do you have any notion where he was last night?”
He might have remarked it was raining outside. Jago’s expression never varied. She opened the door again to its ordinary position, walked out and into the reception room.
The lights went out again. He looked up in frustration, then followed her into the other room to protest the silence and the confusion of his security. She was at the window. She unlatched the side panel, opened it and shut it again, without an alarm.
“What in hell’s going on, Jago?”
Jago took out her pocket-com and thumbed it on, rattled off a string of code he didn’t understand.
Banichi answered. He was relatively certain it was Banichi’s voice. And Jago’s stance showed some small reassurance. She answered, and cut the com off, and put it away.
“It did register,” she said. “ Oursystem registered.”
“Yours and Banichi’s?” he asked—but the com beeped and Jago thumbed it on again and answered it, frowning.
Banichi’s voice replied. Jago’s frown deepened. She answered Banichi shortly, a sign-off, clipped the corn to her belt and headed for the door.
“What was that?” he asked. “What’s happening? Jago?”
She crossed back in two strides, seized his shoulders and looked down at him. “Bren-ji. I’ve never betrayed you. I will not, Bren-ji.”
After which she was out the hall door at the same pace. She shut it. Hard.
Jago? he thought. His shoulders still felt the force of her fingers. And her footsteps were fading at a rapid pace down the hall outside, while he stood there asking himself where Banichi had been last night when he’d set the alarm off.
If there wasanother system—Banichi had known about him opening that window, if Banichi had been monitoring it. And for whatever reason—Banichi hadn’t come back when the general alarm went.
Maybe because Banichi had already discounted it as a threat. But that wasn’tthe Banichi he knew, to take something like that for granted.
It was craziness, from breakfast with the dowager to the television crew arriving in the middle of a security so tight he couldn’t get a telephone. He didn’t like the feeling he was having. He didn’t like the reasons that might make Jago go running out of here, saying, in a language that didn’t have a definite word for trust— trustme to take care of you.
He double-checked the window latch. What kind of person could get in on the upper floor overlooking a sheer drop, he didn’t know, but he didn’t want to find out. He checked the outer door lock, although he’d heard it click.
But what good that was when everyone on staff had keys to the back hall of this place—
He had a sudden and anxious thought, went straight to his bedroom and, on his knees by the bed, reached under the mattress.
The gun Banichi had given him… wasn’t there.
He searched, thinking that the Malguri staff, making the bed, might have shifted it without knowing it was there. He lifted the mattress to be sure—found nothing; no gun, no ammunition.
He let the mattress back down and arranged the bedclothes and the furs—sat down then, on the edge of the bed, trying to keep panic at arm’s length, reasoning with himself that he had as much time to discover the gun missing as they thought it might take him, before they grew anxious; and if they hadn’t devised visual surveillance in the rooms he didn’t know about, whoever had taken it didn’t know yet that he’d discovered the fact.
Fact: someone had it. Someone was armed with it, more to the point, who might or might not ordinarily have access to that issue pistol, or its caliber of ammunition. It was Banichi’s—and if Banichi hadn’t taken it himself, then somebodyhad a gun with an identification and a distinctive marking on its bullets that could report it right back to Banichi’s commander in the Bu-javid.
No matter what it was used for.
If Banichi didn’t know what had happened—Banichi needed to know it was gone—and he didn’t have a phone, a pocket-com, or any way he knew to get one, except to walk out the door, go violate some security perimeter and hope it was Banichi who answered the alarm.
Which was the plan he had. Not the most discreet way to attract attention.
But, again, so long as he called no one’s bluff—things mightstay quiet until Banichi or Jago got back. The missing gun wasn’t a thing to bring to the staff’s attention. He could probably trust Tano and Algini, who’d come with them from Shejidan—but he didn’t know that.
He was rattled. He was tired, after an uneasy night and a nerve-wracking afternoon. He wasn’t, perhaps, making his best decisions—wasn’t up to cleverness, without knowing more than he did.
His nerves twitched to distant thunder—that also was how tired he was. He could go try to trip alarms—but Banichi and Jago were out in the rain, chasing someone, or worse, chasing someone insidethe house. His imagination pictured a tank of methane sitting in the basement, someone with explosives—
But they mustn’t deface Malguri. Atevi wouldn’t take that route. Mishidi. Awkward. Messy. No biichi-ji.
So they wouldn’t explode the place. If anything happened, and a bullet turned up where it shouldn’t, with marks that could trace it to Banichi, he could swear to what had really happened.
Unless he was the corpse in question.
Not a good time to go walking the halls, he decided, or startling his own security, who thought they knew where he was. He’d planned to spend the afternoon reading. He found he had no better or wiser plans. He got his dressing gown for a little extra warmth, went back to the sitting-room fire and picked up his book, back in the histories of Malguri.
About atevi. And loyalty. And expectations that didn’t work out.
Expectations on his side, too—about feelings that just weren’t there. Flat weren’t there, and no use—no possibility—of changing anything to do with biology. What could one do? Pour human hormones into atevi bloodstreams, crosswire atevi brains to send impulses atevi brains didn’t have?
And ask how humans had to fail atevi expectations, at what emotional level. There had to be an emotional level.
No. There didn’t have to be. Terracentric thinking again. There was nothing in the laws of the universe that said what let atevi achieve a very respectable society on their own hadto have human attributes, or respond when humans tried to attach to them in human ways. In a reasonable universe, it didn’t have to happen; more, in a reasonable universe, it was more reasonable for atevi locomotives to resemble human-built locomotives than for atevi to resemble humans psychologically. Locomotives, designed by whatever species, had tracks for easy rolling, shafts to drive the wheels, steam or diesel, and gears to power the shafts, and a pipe to vent the smoke—that was physics. Airplanes flying through an equal density of air wouldn’t tend to look like locomotives. Rockets wouldn’t resemble refrigerators. Physics had its constraints for machines and structures with one job to do, and physics on old Earth and physics on the earth of the atevi wasn’t a smidge different.