“But they are, for atevi who may support you in your positions.”
He’d heard that argument before. He could get around it with Tabini. He longed after Tabini’s company, he longed only to ask him, forthrightly to learn things… that no one else was telling him lately.
And as now and again in the hours since he’d come to Malguri, he suffered another of those moments of dislocation—at one instant convinced that things were all right, and then, with no particular reason, doubting that, and recalling how completely he was isolated, more isolated than the paidhi had ever been from his resources.
“Forgive my question,” he said to Ilisidi. “But the paidhi isn’t always wise enough to understand his position in your affairs. I hope for your good opinion, nai-ji.”
“What do you hope to accomplish in your tenure?”
He hadn’t expected that question. But he’d answered it, repeatedly, in councils. “An advancement for atevi and humans, nai-ji. An advancement, a step toward technological equality, at a pace which won’t do harm.”
“That’s a given, isn’t it? By the Treaty, a dull and tedious given. Be less modest. Name the specific, wondrous thing you’d have done before you die… the gift you wish most, in your great wisdom, to bestow on us.”
He didn’t think it a harmless question. He could name certain things. He honestly didn’t have a clear answer.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“What, the paidhi without a notion what he wishes to do?”
“A step at a time, nai-ji. I don’t know what may be possible. And telling you… would in itself violate the principles…”
“The most ambitious thing you’ve ever advanced.”
“The rail system.”
“Pish. We invented the rail. You improved it.”
That was true, though atevi trains and steamships had been only the most rudimentary design, and boilers had burst with frightening regularity.
“So what more, paidhi? Rockets to the moons? Travel amongst the stars?”
A far more dangerous topic. “I’d like, yes, to see atevi at least reach that threshold in my lifetime. Nai-ji, so much is possible from there. So much you could do then. But we aren’t sure of the changes that would make, and I want to understand what would result. I want to give good advice. That’s my job, nai-ji.” He had never himself seen it so clearly, until now. “We’re at the edge of space. And so much changes once you can look down on the world.”
“What changes?”
One more dangerous question, this one cultural and philosophical. He looked outward, at the lake, the whole world seeming to lie below the path they rode.
“Height changes your perspective, nai-ji. We see three provinces from here. But my eye can’t see the treaty-boundaries.”
“Mine can. That mountain ridge. The river. They’re quite evident.”
“But were this mountain as high as the great moon, nai-ji, and if were you born on this very high mountain, would you see the lines? Or, if you saw them, would they mean to you what they mean to people born on the plain, these distant, invisible lines?”
“ Man’chiis man’chi. Man’chiis important. And to a dweller on the border—what meaning, these lines aijiin agree on? Man’chiis never visible.”
It was gratifying to expect the answer one got, the same that Tabini inevitably gave. It was gratifying to think one did accurately forecast atevi sentiments. It was useful to know about Ilisidi.
“So that wouldn’t change,” he said. “Even if you stood on the highest mountain.”
“ Man’chiwould never change,” Ilisidi said.
“Even if you left the sight of the world for years and years.”
“In hell and on earth, man’chiwould not change. But you don’t understand this, you humans.” Babs struck a slight rise, and for a moment walked solitary, until Nokhada caught up. Ilisidi dowager said, “Or you never tell your enemies, if you do change.”
That, too, was in the machimi plays. The catastrophic event, the overturning of a life’s understandings. But always toward the truth, as he saw it. Always toward what man’chishould have been.
Ilisidi offered no explanation of her remark. Perhaps he was supposed to have asked something wise. But imagination failed him.
“We truthfully didn’t understand your view of things, nai-ji, when we first arrived. We didn’t understand atevi. You didn’t understand us. That’s one of the great and unfortunate reasons of the War.”
“The unfortunate reason of the War was humans taking Mospheira, to which they had no right. It was hundreds of thousands of atevi dislodged from their homes. It was man’chibroken, because we couldn’t deal with your weapons, nand’ paidhi.” The dowager’s voice wasn’t angry, only severe, and emphatic. “And slowly you raise us up to have technology, and more technology. Does this not seem a foolish thing to do?”
Not the first time he’d met that question, either. Atevi asked it among themselves, when they thought the paidhi would hear no report of their discussion. Thwarted councillors shouted it at the paidhi in council. Not even to Tabini could he give the untranslatable, the true answer: We thought we could make you our friends.
So he gave the official, the carefully worked out, translatable reply: “We saw association possible. We saw advantage to us in your good will in this region where fortune had cast us.”
“You tell us whether we shall have roads, or rail. You deny us what pleases you to deny. You promise us wonders. But the great wonders, as I hear, are on Mospheira, for the enjoyment of humans, who have paved roads.”
‘’A very few. Fewer than you have.“
“On a continent a thousand times the size of Mospheira. Be honest, nand’ paidhi.”
“With vehicles that don’t use internal combustion. Which will come, nai-ji, which will come to atevi.”
“In your lifetime… or in mine?”
“Perhaps in thirty years. Perhaps less. Depending on whether we have the necessary industry. Depending on finding resources. Depending on the associations and the provinces finding it politic to cooperate in producing scarce items, in depending on computers. Depending on man’chi, and who’s willing and not willing to work together, and how successful the first programs are… but I needn’t tell that to the aiji-dowager, who knows the obstinacy of vested interests.”
He had made the dowager laugh, if briefly and darkly. The sun cast Ilisidi’s black profile in shadow against the hazy distances of the sky and the lake. They rode a while in silence, there on the crest of the mountain, with the wind picking up the mecheiti’s manes and himself rocking, child-sized, on the back of a creature bred to carry atevi into their infrequent and terrible wars.
“There’s the airport,” Ilisidi said, pointing ahead of them.
Straining his eyes, he could make out what he thought was Maidingi Airport, beside a hazy sprawl he decided must be Maidingi township. Nearer at hand, he could just make out the road, or what he took for it, wending down the mountain.
“Is that the town? he asked, knowing it was a stupid question, but only to break the silence; and Ilisidi said it was Maidingi.
After that, looking out over the broad plain, Ilisidi pointed out the direction of villages outlying Maidingi township, and told him the names of plants and regions and the mountains across the lake.
But in his mind was the history he had seen in the books in his room, the castle standing against attack from the Association across the lake, even before cannon had come into the question. Malguri had stood for centuries against intrusion from the east. Banners flying, smoke of cannon on the walls…