He’d done all Jase’s side of the conversations in his head, was what he’d done. He’d made up all sorts of answerless answers Jase mightgive, if Jase had the vocabulary, if he had time to sit and talk at depth. Naturally Jase was under stress: language learning did that to a mind. Or maybe—or maybe Jase had been doing the same, filling in between the lines to suit hisinitial impression; and when those expectations didn’t match reality, he felt betrayed.
“Jase,” he said.
“What?”
“Where wasthe ship?”
“I told you. A star. A number on a chart.”
“You know the feeling you had we weren’t going fishing?”
“Yes?”
“It’s what I feel when you tell me that.”
Silence followed. It wasn’t a happy silence. He wished at leisure he hadn’t come at Jase with that.
He wished a miracle would happen and Jase would come out of his sulk and be the person he’d thought he was getting, the person who’d help him, not pose him problems; the person who’d stand by him with reason when the going got tough.
But Barb had done that until she’d had enough. She’d run to marry Paul Saarinson. Maybe Jase didn’t want a career of keeping the paidhi mentally together, considering they had to share an apartment.
Maybe in meeting him, the astonishing thought came to him, Jase hadn’t found the man he’dthought he was dealing with, either. The breakdown of trust might be rooted more deeply than any dispute over truthfulness, in failings of his own. He managed so wellwith atevi. His personal life—
Ask Barb how he got along. Ask Barb how easy it was to deal with him.
He remembered Wilson-paidhi. He remembered saying to himself he wouldn’t ever get to that state. The bet had been among University students in the program that Wilson couldn’t smile. That Wilson couldn’treact. Grim man. Unresponsive as hell.
But at the same time those of them going for the single Field Service slot learned to contain what they felt. You learned not to show it. You studiedbeing unreadable.
Barb had complained of it. Barb used to say—he could remember her face across that candlelit table—You’re not on the mainland, Bren. It’s me, Bren.
It gave him a queasy feeling to realize, well, maybe— maybeit had something to do with the falling away and the anger of humans he dealt with. But he’d told Jase. He’d tried to teach Jase to do it. Jase should realize why he didn’t show expression.
Shouldn’the realize it?
Move that into the category of fishing trips.
Fact was, he’d told Jase notto show emotion with atevi, and when Banichi and Jago walked in, he’d been laughing and lively and all those things he’d taught Jase not to be.
Maybe they should have thought a little less about language early on, and more about communication. Maybe they should have learned first what they expected of each other instead of each resigning himself to what he’d gotten.
“You and I,” he said in Mosphei’, “you and I need to talk, Jase. We need it very badly.”
“We were going to do that out here.”
“I’m sorry.I didn’t remotely know what I was getting you into. I knew it was a chancy time. It’s alwaysa chancy time, especially when the pressure mounts up and you want to get away. I knew present company was the chanciest thing on the planet but the people who can doanything always are. It’s the way it works, Jase.”
“I trust you,” Jase said in a curiously fragile tone—had to say it loudly, with all the thump and creak of the mechieti. “I do trustyou, Bren. I’m trying like hell to.”
“I’ll get you back in one piece,” he said. “I swear I will.”
“That isn’t what I’m worried about.”
“What is?” he asked, thinking he’d finally gotten one thread that might pull up a clue to Jase’s thinking.
But Jase didn’t answer that.
And in the next moment he saw Cenedi rein back while Babs kept going. Something was going on. He thought Cenedi had done that to talk to Banichi.
But he was the target. Cenedi fell all the way back to him and Jase.
“Bren-paidhi,” Cenedi said, as Bren restrained Nokhada from a nip at her rival. “The dowager asks why you avoid her. She told me to say exactly that, and to say that Nokhada still knows her way, nadi, if you’ve forgotten.”
22
Nokhada indeed knew the way, and with a little laxness on his part thought she was being sly about moving forward. Had he touched her with the crop, he’d have been there at the expense of every mechieta in front of her.
As it was, Nokhada announced to the mechieti in her path she was coming through with small butts of her head, a little push with the rooting-tusks against an obstinate flank. Mechieti hide was fortunately thick, and tails lashed and heads tossed, but no blood resulted, just ruffling of well-groomed hair.
Cenedi had lagged back. Nokhada achieved the position she wanted, next to Babsidi, and became quite tractable.
“Ah, well,” Ilisidi said, sitting with that easy, graceful seat. She deigned a sidelong glance. “One can only imagine.”
One didn’t dare say a thing.
“Oh, come, come, nand’ paidhi. Arewe like humans? Or are humans like us? Is it—how am I to put it delicately—technically feasible?”
“One is certain we are not the first pair to have made the—” That led, in Ragi, to a difficult grammatical pass. He was sure he blushed. “To try.”
“Was it pleasant?” she asked, delighting, damn her, to ask.
“Yes, nand’ dowager.” He wouldn’t retreat, and met her sidelong glance with a pleasant smile.
Her grin could blind the sun. And vanished, in pursed lips. “Now that the world knows the paidhi has such interests, there’ll be suchgossip. My neighbor who loves to spy on my balcony will be absolutely convincedof scandal in our little breakfasts, now. We must do it again.”
“I would be delighted, aiji-ma.” He had no need to feign relief to have her take it well. “I treasure those hours you give to me.”
“Oh, not that I have any scarcity of hours! I languish in disuse. My hours are such a little gift.”
“Your hours and your good sense are my rescue, aiji-ma, and so I trespass egregiously on them, but never, never wish to impose.”
“Languishing, I say. And now, now you drop young men from the heavens and expect meto civilize them.—Did I detect strife, nand’ paidhi? Do I find discord?”
“He doesn’t expect fish at this altitude.”
Ilisidi laughed and laughed.
“Ah, paidhi-ji, a fish is what we hope for. A great gape-mouthed fish of a Kadigidi, which thinks to wreck us. I wanted you with me, Bren-ji. I likethe numbers we’ve worked with this far; and I nevertempt an Atageini beyond his virtue.”
He was shocked. Outright shocked. Banichi and Jago had ridden up on his right and he wondered if theyhad accounted how great a temptation the paidhiin posed inside an Atageini perimeter, with the dice in motion, the demons of chance and fortune given their moment to overthrow the order of the world.
Baji-naji. The latticework of the universe, that allowed movement in the design.
Tabini was sleeping with the Atageini: Tatiseigi had made his move to get into the apartment to get at them, for good or ill or just to make up his mind, and Ilisidi had moved in. Ilisidi had possessed herself of the greatest temptation that might tip the Atageini toward a power-grab of their own, just flicked temptation out of Tatiseigi’s reach at the very moment it might prove critical to his choice of direction in these few dangerous days.