“Bren-ji?” Jago asked as he took his place in the elevator car.
“Tired,” he said. “Tired, Jago-ji.” He managed a cheerful face. “Time for a week on leave.”
Banichi pressed the button. The elevator carried them down, down to the cavernous tile and concrete of the restricted subway station beneath the Bu-javid.
It was a short walk to the subway car, in a larger space than Jase had been in since he’d come into the Bu-javid by this same route.
“All right?” he asked Jase, seeing that little hesitation, that intake of breath.
“Fine,” Jase said, and walked steadily beside him, Banichi and Jago in front, Tano and Algini behind, down past the train engine to the two cars which were waiting with the requisite House Guard and a Guild pair from the aiji’s staff—Bren’s eye picked them out.
“Nadi?” Banichi took up his post just inside, and they boarded, Tano and Algini going to the baggage car with junior security, Banichi and Jago staying with them.
“Rear seat’s the most comfortable,” he said to Jase—he recalled saying that the day he’d escorted Jase tothe hill, in the same car, on his way to the confinement in which Jase had lived. They took their seats. Jago, on pocket com, standing by the door, talked to someone, probably intermediate to the Bu-javid station that governed use of the tracks, clearing their departure.
The door shut and the car got underway.
Jase sat with nervous anticipation evident as the shuttered private subway car rumbled and thumped along its course down the hill and across a city Jase had never seen except from the windows of the Bu-javid and once from the air.
“Nervous, nadi?”
“No, nadi.” Jase was quick to say so. And sat, hands on knees, braced against the slightest movement of the car.
But a lot of strangeness, Bren could only guess, was surely impacting Jase’s senses right now, from the shaking of the car, the smells, the noise.
Evidently some of them were alarming sensations from a spaceman’s point of view, as were large open spaces: the echoes disoriented him, maybe. Maybe just the size did. Bren had no idea, but to reassure Jase he adopted an easy pose, legs extended, ankles crossed, and kept talk to a minimum while Jase’s eyes darted frantically to every different rattle of the wheels on the switching-points, the least change in sound as they exited the tunnel and went in open air.
“We’re on the surface again,” Bren explained. “We’ve been in a tunnel.”
Jase didn’t look reassured. And probably Jase knew he was overreacting, even suspected he looked foolish in his anxiety, but they had one more rule in effect, and Jase had agreed to it as Jase had agreed to every other condition: no matter what, Jase wasn’t to speak anything but Ragi on this trip. If the car wrecked, he’d made the point with Jase, screamin Ragi. He might not be able to hold to it throughout, but if that was the ideal, maybe, Bren thought, it would encourage Jase to shift his thoughts into the language totally, the way Jase had existed while he was gone on the tour. If it didn’t do everything he’d hoped, in terms of forcing Jase into Ragi, it might at least force Jase back into that mindset so that he had a chance of arguing with him.
Meanwhile the car thumped and rumbled its way toward the airport.
A happy family, on its way to the beach, Bren thought, surveying his complement of catatonic, well-dressed roommate and heavily armed security in black leather and silver studs, themselves in high spirits and having a good time.
“We were duea vacation,” Banichi remarked cheerfully. They were not quite so vacation-bound that he or any of his fellow Guild members took advantage of the stocked breakfast juice bar in the aiji’s own, red velvet-appointed subway car, but Banichi did sit down at his ease, stretch out his huge body and heave a sigh. And doubtless it wasfar better than a rooftop in the peninsula. “We’re due rain, of course, but it’s spring—what can one hope?”
“It should still be fine,” Jago said from her vantage by the door, one hand loosely on a hanging strap. “The sea, the sand—”
“The cold fogs.”
“Nadiin,” Bren said, and roused himself to the same level of enthusiasm as his security, “we are safe, we are away, lord Tatiseigi is visiting his ownapartment tonight, we are notthere, and I believe they have gotten the illicit television downstairs.”
“The Guard is guarding it, nand’ paidhi,” Banichi said, “with its usual zeal, of course.”
There were grins. Probably Jase didn’t follow the joke. But security was in a high good mood and the car rocked and thundered on, swayed around the turn that meant the airport station was coming up. Junior security, who had their baggage under close watch, would get it all aboard the vans.
The subway train stopped, security rose to take routine positions as the doors opened and security went out first.
Bren collected Jase, left the details to his staff, and sure enough the vans were waiting, with Bu-javid security in charge from beginning to end, in this very highly securitied spur of the regular public subway.
“Careful,” he said, fearing Jase’s balance problems, but Jase made a clean step out of the car and onto the concrete.
Jase had no difficulty there, and none in boarding the waiting van. He flung himself into the seat, however, as if relieved to sit down; his face was a little pale, his eye-blinks grown rapid as they did when he was fighting problems in perspective. Bren sat down more slowly beside him, with Banichi and Jago immediately after while others were loading the luggage into the second van under Tano’s supervision.
The van whisked them to the waiting plane and braked right by the ladder. Immediately, the second van was with them, bringing the luggage, which was not alone their clothes, but the clutter of weaponry and electronics that went with the paidhi wherever he and his security went.
It was Tabini’s jet. And it was needful now, Banichi out first and Jago next, and Bren third, for Jase to climb down from the van into the noise of the jet engines, and walk, on a flat surface and under a sky with a few gray-bottomed clouds, from the roofed van to the ladder and up the ladder into the plane. Jase made the step, didn’t look up (which he’d said especially bothered him), and crossed to the ladder, shaking off Jago’s offered hand.
“Wait,” Bren said to Banichi and Jago, because the metal ladder shook when that pair climbed it with their usual energy, and he didn’t figure that would help Jase at all, whose knuckles were white on the rail as he climbed doggedly toward the boarding platform, his eyes on the steps, never on his surroundings.
Jase went inside, to be met by the co-pilot. Bren went up next and Jago and Banichi followed him; Tano and Algini stayed below to stand watch over the luggage-loading.
The computer, alone of their luggage, went in the cabin with them; Jago had it, and tucked it into a storage area, while outside the luggage-loading went so fast that the hatch thumped down while Jase was settling into his seat in the table-chair grouping and while Bren was saying hello to the pilot and co-pilot.
“One hopes for a quieter flight, nand’ paidhi,” the pilot said.
He’d actually forgottenabout the boy from Dur during the last twenty hours, during which they’d accomplished the logistics and arrangements, and during which uncle Tatiseigi had lodged in Ilisidi’s hospitality.
They were away and clear. The boy from Dur had his ribboned card which might save him from parental wrath, the apartment was still intact after the state reception, and the television was out of the pantry, entertaining the House Guard for the duration of uncle Tatiseigi’s stay, which should about equal their days on the western shore near Saduri.