“We’d like to do more such interviews,” the man said—he could notrecall the name: Daigani or something like it. “We’d be delighted to tape one, nand’paidhi, actually in Mospheira. Perhaps reciprocal arrangements with your television, but one of our crews actually on site—interviews with ordinary people, that sort of thing.”
“Certainly if something of the sort could be worked out,” he answered. It was the answer to any unlikely proposal. He couldn’t have it go to Mospheira as something he’d agreed to. “I could contact the appropriate people—” It was a deliberate, Give me a phone, challenge to Banichi and Jago andTabini. A dozen uneasy thoughts slithered through the back of his mind. The news services had to know that someone had tried to kill him, and no one had mentioned that fact. Hehadn’t. The Bu-javid’s conspiratorial attitude about security seeped into the blood and bone of those who lived there—one didn’ttalk to the press without authorization, one didn’t carry gossip, one left it to the departments with authority to state official policy.
But he couldn’t tell the news that a man had died here yesterday? Or they knew and didn’t ask?
He didn’t know what had gone out on the news in the last week. He didn’t know what wascommon knowledge and what wasn’t, and the policy of his office said keep quiet when you didn’t know.
So he made polite expressions and bowed and sweated, still, in spite of the cooling of the air. A front was moving in. The crew hoped their flight would beat it out. They’d ridden through the front this morning, a choppy, bumpy flight, what Jago called ‘long,’ and the news crew called ‘uncomfortable,’
But the front doors were open now, with the wind blowing through, and the light coming in, brighter than the electric bulbs in this hall, which only managed a wan, golden glow. The crew carried out their lights, the interviewer lingered for small talk, and Tano and Algini had their heads together over by the door, watching the crew carry the equipment—Algini had come up with them. So had Banichi, Jago was… somewhere, probably resting; and meanwhile the thoughts about what he’d said and what he’d thought kept jostling one another at the back of his mind, clamoring for attention and further analysis.
Banichi carefully disengaged the interviewer, then, and walked him as far as the door, where one last round of bows was obligatory.
Bren made his own courtesies, and, with the last of the crew outside, leaned his shoulders against the shadowed back of the door and sighed in relief.
“Tano and Aligini will see them down to the airport,” Banichi said, turning up as a shadow out of the sunlight. “They may stay down, for supper. I discovered a good restaurant.”
“That’s fine,” he said, and didn’t ask Why don’t we all go? because most patrons didn’t like assassinations during the salad course. He realized he’d been nervous as hell about the interview, not alone because of the questions that might turn up, but because he didn’t trust the crew with all those boxes of equipment, and because he didn’t know these people.
He’d become, he decided, thoroughly paranoid. Afraid, And he didn’tthink a crew from the national news network was going to produce explosive devices.
It was stupid.
“You did very well, nand’ paidhi.”
“I couldn’t get my thoughts together. I could have done better.”
“Tabini thinks there should be more of these interviews,” Banichi said. “He thinks it’s time the paidhi became more public. More in touch with the people.”
“Is that going to stop the people that don’t want me alive?” He didn’t mean to be negative. Doubtless the move was a good idea. Doubtless Tabini thought so. But his uneasy feeling persisted.
“Why don’t you go upstairs, nadi, and get out of the coat? You can relax now.”
He didn’t know if he could manage to relax, for the rest of the day, but the coat collar chafed, and he’d gotten stiff, sitting still. It was more than a good idea, to go up and change clothes. It was the only thing they’d let him do or decide for the rest of the day. His grand single decision.
Until tomorrow.
He said, because it was politic at the moment and because he’d meant it, earlier, and sullenly told himself he would, again: “I was rude last night, Banichi, forgive me.”
“I didn’t notice,” Banichi said. Banichi’s attention was out the door, toward the van, the doors of which were slamming shut.
“I’m sorry about your associate. And for your instructors.”
“It was none of your doing. Or mine. One only wishes he had been wiser—but no more successful.” Banichi laid a hand on his shoulder, only half welcome. “Go upstairs, nadi.”
Go away, don’t bother me. The paidhi could translate. Banichi’s thoughts were elsewhere, and he—after the heat of the lights—decided he was going to go back upstairs and finish the bath he’d had to leave. People didn’t bother him in the bath. He didn’t have to talk philosophy in the bath. And it helped a soreness he didn’t want to discuss with the servants.
It took no little time to fire up the boiler again, and run water. He took the time for a light lunch, in which he read the first committee letters, then thought—how quickly the mind dropped into familiar ruts—that he should take computer notes.
But they didn’t run extension cords from the kitchen for the paidhi, no, just for news cameramen, and no one mentioned going back to Shejidan.
So he had his bath, leaned his head back on the rim of the tub, steam rising around him. He had a glass of the human-compatible liquor sitting by him, and a stack of catalogs… the vacation catalog, among them, plus one for sports equipment—not that he had any reasonable use for a second pair of skis, or another ski suit, but, then, almost all his catalog-perusing was wishful.
Thunder rumbled through the stones. He wondered idly if the news crew’s commercial flight had made it out on schedule. He truly hoped so. He wanted them out and away. He wondered, too, what Algini and Tano were up to in the rustic pleasures of Maidingi township. Sightseeing around the lake shore, maybe. One hoped they wouldn’t be soaked.
He had a sip from the sweating glass— icein good liquor? Tabini had asked him incredulously, early in their acquaintance.
Djinana, presented with such a request, had raised his brows and blinked, much more diplomatic. And with the power on again, and the lights working, ice did exist in the kitchens.
He turned the page and considered ski boots, scanned the art and culture inset, a service of the company, which described the recovery of old art from the data banks. Read the article on the building of the Mt. Allan Thomas resort, the first luxury establishment on Mospheira, where a hardy few had resurrected the idea of skiing.
Atevi were lately showing an interest in the sport, on their own mountains. Tabini called it suicide—then seemed to show a grudging flicker of interest himself, when he’d seen the homemade skiing tapes the paidhi had cleared through the Commission.
A potential common passion, human and atevi. Good for relations.
He’d almost talked Tabini into trying it, if the damned security crisis hadn’t blown up. He might yet. There were, supposedly, good slopes in the Bergid, only an hour away from Shejidan—where fools risked their necks, as Tabini put it.
The interview still bothered him. He still worried over what he’d said, or what expression he’d had, when atevi didn’t show expression… and hewasn’t used to television cameras and talking to glaring lights…