“I can’t.”
“ I can’t be up here in the city, either, but I’m doing it! I can’t leave my house and my business, but I’m doing it! Jill can’t answer the phone without lunatics harassing her! We’ve had to leave home and all come up here, and I can’t let my family go down the street to the park! You know what put mama in the hospital, Bren? You did. People throwing paint on her building, the landlord saying he wants her to move—”
He tried to think through the things he didn’t want to hear to the things he hadto hear—while remembering agencies on both sides of the water were recording everything. “Toby. Call my office. Ask Shawn—”
“ I’ve done that! I can’t get through! None of the numbers you’ve given me work any more, and I don’t even know whether Shawn’s in office this week, by what I’m hearing in the papers!”
“What’s in the papers, Toby? They don’t exactly—”
“ No, no, no! I’m not doing your work for you! I’m yourbrother, not a clerk in the State Department! And I want you back here, Bren. I want you back here for mama! One week, one miserableweek, that’s all I want!”
“I can’t.”
“ The hell you can’t! Tell the aiji your mother coulddie, dammit, and she’s asking for you!”
“Toby—”
“ Oh— hell, I forgot. You can’t explain feelings, can you? They’re not wired for it. Well, what about you, Bren? Is it all the office, and nothing for your family?”
“Toby.”
“ I don’t want your excuses, Bren. I’ve covered for you and covered for you and not told you the truth because it’d upset you. Well, now I’m telling you the truth, and mama’s in danger of her life and I can’t take my family home, and I’m scared to death they’re going to burn my house down while I’m gone!”
“Just hang on, Toby. Just a little longer.”
“ I can’t! I’m not willing to, dammit! I’m tired of trying to explain what the hell you’re doing! We can’t explain it toourselves anymore— how inhell do we make it make sense to the neighbors!”
“You know damn well what the score is, Toby. Don’t hand me that. You knowwhat’s going on in the government and what game they’re playing.”
“ What are you talking about? What are you talking about, Bren? Thatwe’re the enemy, now?”
“I’m saying call Shawn!”
“ I’m saying Shawn’s number doesn’t work anymore and the police won’t answer our emergency calls, Bren, try that one! You’re not damn popular, and they’re taking it out on my family and our mother!”
“Wrong. Wrong, Toby! It’s not the whole island, it’s a handful of crawling cowards that on a bright day—”
“ These are ourneighbors, Bren. These are myneighbors that aren’t speaking to me, people I’ve known for ten years!”
“Then get yourself a new set of friends, Toby!”
“ That doesn’t work for mama, Bren, that doesn’t work in the building she’s lived in for all these years and now they don’t want her any more. What does thatdo to her, Bren? What do you say to that?”
“It’s a rotten lot of people you’ve fallen for.”
“ What are you talking about? What are you talking about, Bren? I don’t understand you.”
He grew accustomed to silence on his feelings. He was a translator, a technical translator, by necessity a diplomat, by cooption a lord of the atevi Association. And he spoke out of hurt and anger on the most childish possible level, maybe because that was the mental age this argument touched, the last time he and Toby hadaccessed what they felt. Toby had moved out to the coast. He’d thought then, and still thought, it was to put space between Toby and their mother. He’dgone into University, and aptitudes had steered him toward what the job was supposed to be, which hadn’t been this.
“Tell mama I love her,” he said, and hung up on his brother.
That little click of the receiver broke the vital connection, and he knew there wasn’t a way to get it back. The training didn’t let expression reach his face. The training didn’t let him do anything overt. He just sat there a moment, with an atevi lady’s office coming back into focus around him, and the sounds of the party going on above the silence that click had created, and with the knowledge he had to get up and function with very dangerous people and go be sure Jase was all right.
And he had to finish his talk with Ilisidi, somehow, get the wit organized to regain that mood and that moment and do his job.
If you couldn’t do anything about a vital matter, you postponed it. You put it in a mental box and shut the lid on it and didn’t think about it when there was a job to do.
And once he’d done that, damn it! He was mad at Toby, who knewthings about the government Toby could have told him, critical things, and Toby hadn’t, wouldn’t, no matter whether peace or war could hinge on it. Toby’s peace was unsettled, Toby’s life was put out of joint, Toby came at him with personalgrievances of a sort the family had once known to keep away from him—which Toby could have been man enough to hold to himself this week and handle, dammit, since there wasn’t and wouldn’t be anything he could do from where he was.
But it had been a succession of weeks. Toby was getting tired of holding it.
Jago appeared in the doorway. She had her com in hand. Had been using it, he thought, maybe even following the conversation via a relay from the foyer-area security station. Surveillance here, in these premises, was always close, and lately it was overt, just one of those jobs his staff did to be up on things without having them explained.
Sometimes that was a good thing.
“The aiji is aware, nadi-ji.”
Not Bren-ji, not the familiar; but the still-remote formal combined with the personal address. Jago was being official. He was grateful for the professional distance. It was a damn sight more consideration than his brother managed.
“My man’chi,” he said, going to the heart of what he was sure would worry atevi, “is still to the office and the aiji, nadi. You may tell him that.”
“He wishes to speak to you, but cannot leave the breakfast room without notice nor speak to you intimately there. He says, through your security, that though he has said so before, now he urges your acceptance of his offer: at any time of your choosing, you may bring your household to the mainland and he will establish a place and lands for them, nadi-ji, as fits the house of a man of your stature. If you ask, he will make strong request to the Mospheiran government to secure their immediate passage across the strait, with all their goods and belongings. He is aware of the demands of those of your house, and your difficult position, nadi-ji, and is willing to take the strongest action to secure their safety.”
“Tell him—” The last time Tabini had moved to secure something from the Mospheiran government, he had threatened to shoot Deana Hanks if they didn’t get himback in twenty-four hours. Tabini’s offer was not without international consequences. And not without force behind it, though he didn’t know what human official Tabini could tell them he’d shoot this time. “Tell him I am grateful. Tell him—I hold his regard as the most important, even—” He almost said—above my family’s good opinion; and knew that circumstances and duty had made it true. Now anger and bitter hurt almost confirmed it. “Even above my life, nadi. Tell him that. And I will come back to the gathering when I have composed myself, which should be only a moment.”