“Live, on tape,” he said. He saw no reason to forbear anything, and he stayed angry, now, though on the edge of terror. He’d not deserved this, he told himself—not deserved it of Tabini, or Cenedi, or Ilisidi. “So who are you? What do you want, nadi? Anything reasonable? I’m sure not.”
“No fear at all?” the shadow asked him. “No remorse, no regret?”
“What should I regret, nadi? Relying on the dowager’s hospitality? If I’ve passed my welcome here, I apologize, and I’d like to—leave—”
One shadow separated itself from the others, picked up the chair, turned it quietly face about and sat down, arms folded on the low back.
“Where did you get the gun?” this shadow asked, a stranger’s voice,
“I didn’t have a gun. Banichi fired. I didn’t.”
“Why would Banichi involve himself? And why did it turn up in your bed?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Has Banichi ever gone with you to Mospheira?”
“No.”
“Gone to Mospheira at all?”
“No. No ateva has, in my lifetime.”
“You’re lying about the gun, aren’t you?”
“No,” he said.
The tic in his left leg started again. He tried to stay calm and to think, while the questions came one after the other and periodically circled back to the business of the gun.
The tape ran out, and he watched them replace it. The tic never let up. Another one threatened, in his right arm, and he tried to change position to relieve it.
“What do you project,” the next question was, on a new tape, “on future raw metals shipments to Mospheira? Why the increase?”
“Because Mospheira’s infrastructure is wearing out.” It was the pat answer, the simplistic answer. “We need the raw metals. We have our own processing requirements.”
“And your own launch site?”
Wasn’t the same question. His heart skipped a beat. He knew he took too long. “What launch site?”
“We know. Yougave us satellites. Shouldn’t we know?”
“Don’t launch from Mospheira latitude. Can’t. Not practical.”
“Possible. Practical, if that’s the site you have. Or do any boats leave Mospheira that don’t have to do with fishing?”
What damned boats? he asked himself. If there was anything, hedidn’t know it, and he didn’t rule that out. “We’re not building any launch site, nadi, I swear to you. If we are, the paidhi isn’t aware of it.”
“You slip numbers into the dataflow. You encourage sectarian debates to delay us. Most clearly you’re stockpiling metals. You increase your demands for steel, for gold—you give us industries, and you trade us micro-circuits for graphite, for titanium, aluminum, palladium, elements we didn’t know existed a hundred years ago and, thanks to you, now we have a use for. Now you import them, minerals that don’t exist on Mospheira. For what? For what do you use these things, if not the same things you’ve taught us to use them for, for light-lift aircraft you don’t fly, for—”
“I’m not an engineer. I’m not expert in our manufacturing. I know we use these things in electronics, in high-strength steel for industry—”
“And light-lift aircraft? High-velocity fan blades for jets you don’t manufacture?”
He shook his head, childhood habit. It meant nothing to atevi. He was in dire trouble, and he couldn’t tell anybody who urgently needed to know the kind of suspicions atevi were entertaining. He feared he wouldn’t have the chance to tell anybody outside this room if he didn’t come up with plausible, cooperative answers for this man.
“I’ve no doubt—no doubt there are experimental aircraft. We haven’t anything but diagrams of what used to exist. We build test vehicles. Models. We testwhat we think we understand before we give advice that will let some ateva blow himself to bits, nadi, we know the dangers of these propellants and these flight systems—”
“Concern for us.”
“Nadi, I assure you, we don’t want some ateva blowing up a laboratory or falling out of the sky and everybody saying it was our fault. People find fault with the programs. There are enough people blaming us for planes that don’t file flight plans and city streets piled full of grain because the agriculture minister thought the computer was making up the numbers—damned right we have test programs. We try to prevent disasters before we ask you to risk your necks—it’s not a conspiracy, it’s public relations!”
“It’s more than tests,” the interrogator said. “The aiji is well aware. Is he not?”
“He’s not aware. I’m not aware. There isno launch site. There’s nothing we’re holding back, there’s nothing we’re hiding. If they’re building planes, it’s a test program.”
“Who gave you the gun, nadi?”
“Nobody gave me a gun. I didn’t even know it was under my mattress. Ask Cenedi how it got there.”
“Who gave it to you, nadi-ji? Just give us an answer. Say, The aiji gave it to me, and you can go back to bed and not be concerned in this.”
“I don’t know. I said I don’t know.”
The man nearest drew a gun. He saw the sheen on the barrel in the almost dark. The man moved closer and he felt the cold metal against his face. Well, he thought, That’s what we want, isn’t it? No more questions.
“Nand’ paidhi,” the interrogator said. “You say Banichi fired the shots at the intruder in your quarters. Is that true?”
Past a certain point, to hell with the game. He shut his eyes and thought about the snow and the sky around winter slopes. About the wind, and nobody else in sight.
Told him something, that did, that it wasn’t Barb his mind went to. If it mattered. It was, however, a curious, painful discovery.
“Isn’t that true, nand’ paidhi?”
He declined to answer. The gun barrel went away. A powerful hand pulled his head up and banged it against the wall.
“Nand’paidhi. Tabini-aiji has renounced you. He’s given your disposition into our hands. You’ve read the letter. Have you not?”
“Yes.”
“What is our politics to you?—Let him go, nadi. Let go. All of you, wait outside.”
The man let him go. They changed the rules of a sudden. The rest of them filed out the door, letting light past, so that he could see at least the outlined edges of the interrogator’s face, but he didn’t think he knew the man. He only wondered what the last-ditch proposition was going to be, or what the man had to offer him he wasn’t going to say with the others there. He wasn’t expecting to like it.
The interrogator reached down and cut off the recorder. It was very quiet in the cell, then, for a long, long wait.
“Do you think,” the man said finally, “that we dare release you now, nand’ paidhi, to go back to Mospheira? On the other hand, if you provided the aiji-dowager the necessary evidence to remove the aiji, if you became a resource useful on our side—we’d be fools to turn you over to more radical factions of our association.”
“Cenedi said the same thing. And sent me here.”
“We support the aiji-dowager. We’d keep you alive and quite comfortable, nand’ paidhi. You could go back to Shejidan. Nothing essential would change in the relations of the association with Mospheira—except the party in power. If you’re telling the truth, and you don’t know the other information we’d like to have, we’re reasonable. We can accept that, so long as you’re willing to provide us statements that serve our point of view. It costs you nothing. It maintains you in office, nand’ paidhi. All for a simple answer. What do you say?” The interrogator bent, complete shadow again, and turned the tape recorder back on. “Who provided you the gun, nand’ paidhi?”
“I never had a gun,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The interrogator cut off the tape recorder, picked it up, got up, and left him.