He knew why Tabini hadlet that radio traffic, ostensibly between small aircraft flying near the Association-Mospheiran boundary and a tower controller on the atevi mainland, go on without protest: it was deliberate provocation on someone’s part on the mainland to be doing what they were doing, bold as brass on the airwaves. That they continued had nothing to do with rights of expression as they defined free speech on Mospheira. By the Treaty no Mospheiran had the right to use a radio to communicate across the strait. By allowing those radio messages to continue, Tabini was simply, in human parlance, giving the perpetrators enough rope to hang themselves and draw in others before he cracked down, definitely on Direiso, possibly on the perpetrators of the messages, and diplomatically on Hanks.
But the area where that was going on was (he had checked) well north of the area where they were going.
And, while he would be involved in the crisis those messages were bound to engender when the crackdown came, it wasn’t his problem now. His job right now was simply making sure that Jase got his chance to relax and reach some sort of internal peace with the land and the people. He had great faith that a little exposure to problems more basic and more natural than living pent up in the pressured Bu-javid environment would help Jase immensely. And he, himself—
He needed to rest. He finally admitted that. He’d reached the stage when there just wasn’t any more reserve. No more nerves, no more sense, no more flexibility of wit.
He’d had his last real leave—oh, much too long ago.
He’d stood on a ski slope, on Mt. Allen Thomas, in the very heart of the island, getting sunburn on his nose, coated in snow from a header. (He’d gotten a little slower, a little more cautious in his breakneck skiing.)
But, oh, the view from up there was glorious, when the sun turned the snow gold and the evergreens black in the evenings.
When the mists came up off the blue shadows and the wind whispered across the frozen surface in the morning—then he was alive.
It would have terrified Jase.
Ah, well, he said to himself, and propped one ankle on the other and asked junior security for a fruit juice.
“Would you care for one, Jasi-ji?”
“Yes, nadi, please,” Jase said.
Definitely better.
The fruit juice arrived. “Pretty clouds,” Bren remarked, and Jase looked and agreed with relative calm that they were that.
Vacation would do them all good, he said to himself.
Because… he had a sip of fruit juice and stared at the empty seat across from him, the one Jago usually occupied… he was definitely reaching the fracture point himself, and seeing conspiracy under every porcelain lily petal.
Conspiracy that linked the various shattered major pieces of the last several days, from whatever had necessitated the assassination of Saigimi, to whatever Hanks had pursued, to Direiso, to a couple of radio operators up by Wiigin, and even to the paint flung at his mother’s apartment building.
He just wished he hadn’t hung up on Toby. Their mother’s surgery was this week. And he wouldn’t hear. He just wouldn’t hear. He’d resigned himself to that.
Hard on the relatives, the job he’d taken, the job Jase had volunteered for, never having been out of the reach of family and familiarity in his life.
He sipped his fruit juice. Jase eventually remembered to drink his.
The plane took a turn toward the west. Jase braced himself and looked at the window as if he expected to see something.
“It’s all right.”
Jase took a deep breath. “Can you see the water as we come in, nadi?”
“We’re starting descent. You should be able to see it. You should have a good view.”
He didn’t know why Jase had taken the ocean as his ambition. He was only glad that Jase had taken something that easy for his goal, something hecould deliver.
He got up briefly and spoke to Banichi.
On the paidhi’s request and the local tower’s willingness, the plane made a very unusual approach, swinging low and slow over the water’s edge, then flew out over the sea and the large resort island of Onondisi, which sat in the bay, affording the ship-paidhi a view. Bren stood up to see, with his hand on a safety-grip, mindful of island pilots, standing and looking over Jase’s shoulder at a pleasant rock-centered island with bluffs to the north and sandy beach to the south, where the resorts clustered.
“Melted water,” Jase said in a tone of awe. “All that melted water.”
Now and again Jase could utterly surprise him.
“Melted it is.”
“Is it warm?”
“About the temperature of a cold water tap.” He reached past Jase to point at the hotels that clustered among trees on the heights of the island. “Vacation places. Hotels. You stay there and go down to the beaches.”
“Ordinary people go there?” Jase asked.
“And lords, nadi. And whoever wants to. The ordinary consideration is security, for the lords, so usually the high lords stay on the south shore of the bay. A lot of private beaches over there, but not as fine as these.”
“Other people, they don’t have to worry?”
“No.—Except if they’ve made somebody very, very angry. And even then they know whether they have to worry.”
“Are they scared with this assassination going on?”
“The Guild won’t touch a common man without a Filing of Intent. Even then the Guild has to be convinced there’s a strong and real grievance, so,” he said, with an eye to all the tiny figures on the beaches, wading the surf, “unless someone’s done something really outrageous enough to get a Filing approved—they’re safe, down there.”
“But not lords?”
“Lords have Guild in their households,” Jago said, standing close. “And the Guild doesn’t necessarily have to approve a greater lord moving against a lesser if right can be demonstrated later.”
“And a lesser against a greater?” Jase asked.
“It must approve that. And with common folk, it must. And often,” Jago said as an afterthought, “we mediate between common folk. Many times, a feud among folk like that doesn’t draw blood. We see many, many situations that common folk think extraordinary. We can bring perspective to a matter.”
One suspected (Tano had hinted as much, and he’d observed it on the daily news) a commoner-feud usually went quite slowly indeed if the Guild suspected mediation would result. Sometimes, the paidhi strongly suspected, the Guild did absolutely nothing for a few months, expecting its phone to ring with an offer to the opposing side, once the targeted party grew anxious.
Jago didn’t volunteer such information, however; and the plane swept on over water, this time with the view of Mospheira a distant blue haze past the rolling hills.
“That’s the island, nadi. Theisland. Mospheira.”
The wing tipped up, hiding it, as they were obliged to veer off along the invisible boundary.
“I didn’t see it,” Jase said.
“It’s just hazy out there. It wasthe haze.”
“I didn’t see it, all the same.” Jase sounded disappointed.
“Well, I’ll point it out to you when we’re on the ground. I’m sure we’ll be able to see it.—The hills closer to us, that was the height of Mogari-nai.”
Behind them now lay the rocky coastal bluffs that photographers loved, along with those of Elijiri which were near Geigi’s estate, further inland. Mogari-nai was set, one understood, on the aiji’s land, well back from the scenic areas, in a zone dedicated once to firing cannon balls intended to fall on hostile wooden ships approaching the port at Saduri Township.
Now Mogari-nai faced a periodic barrage of electronic interference launched from Mospheira, and that opposing shore was lined with radar installations.
Ask about that interference in a protest to the Mospheiran government, and naturally the problem immediately spread to the phone lines.