“He’s saying the current through the strait is very strong. Boats starting from Mospheira if they don’t reach Dur, it carries them onto a beach near Saduri.”
“Water current.”
“Yes.” Hedidn’t know what caused a current. It wasn’t the time to find out. He had a council of war around him and Jase. The dowager was looking grimly at the map over which he was sure her knowledge of plans that might be affected was superimposing other considerations, and the boy went on.
“Nand’ dowager,” the boy said. “I could take the plane out there. I could get to Dur and tell my father you need help.”
Ilisidi scowled at the boy. “You don’t have a key.”
“One doesn’t need a key, nandi.”
“One forgot. Stealing airplanes is your trade. How doesone start it?”
“One pushes a button, nand’ dowager.”
“A security disaster. Stay here. I plan to charge your father your hourly keep.”
“But I could help!”
“Gods felicitous, boy, this is the communications headquarters for half the continent! Do you think we can’t phoneyour father?”
“But they might tap the phones. Mightn’t they, nand’ dowager?”
There was quiet for a moment, and Cenedi said, “It might be a useful diversion. And the boy’s presence on the radio could get four men in unannounced.”
“A damned fool of a boy whose welfare is in myhands.”
“Nand’ dowager, I could go right off the cliff and beon approach. I could fly men into Dur! And we’ll get my father to shut the ferry down, so nobody can go from Wiigin to here! If you send men, he’ll believe me!”
“Wari-ji.”
The man so named leaned a hand on the table. “One does see it as possible, aiji-ma. And the boy has a point.”
“Instruct him. If he can start the thing, ifit has fuel—let him go. And go now. We haven’t touched Dur, so as not to involve them, but Dur has touched us. So let them act, if they will.”
“Yes,” the man said. Nawari was his entire name. “Boy.”
The boy darted to the man and toward the door, remembered to bow, and went where the man beckoned him to go. There was a silence in the glassed-in room until the door was shut. On the end of a console counter outside in the communications center, the carefully prepared buffet laid in the path, and the boy pocketed a sandwich as he passed that table, against, Bren supposed, famine on the way to Dur.
It was safe food: their own people had brought it, as Bren understood, when they came in to secure Mogari-nai. Even if everyone but the paidhiin had had the foresight to tuck emergency rations into their pockets once they left the baggage behind.
“There’s fuel in the plane,” Ilisidi said. “As happens. Our staff flew it here.” There were men still on guard on the roof and about the area of the transmission towers, men who had certainly gotten up to Mogari-nai somehow, but there were too many for one small plane. “One would leave the young fool here, but one can lay odds he’d be in the midst of matters.” The dowager’s fingers rested on the map, on the aforenamed beach and the island of Dur. “Dur-wajran and its position has been a concern. I do rely on the boy’s assessment of his father’s man’chi, and I am relieved on that score. We havea number of men on Dur. They came in two days ago on the ferry from Saduri, but they’re there as tourists unless they receive orders or see trouble. Nawari will provide them orders for quiet and specific actions and, with the active cooperation of the lord of Dur, we can close off Wiigin from Saduri by water. The boy canbe useful in that regard. As is his advice useful. Trust every local youth to know that beach. And if that isthe case, so do the Kadigidi know it. They mayhave advised a boatload of otherwise inept human sailors to put out from Jackson Harbor with enough fuel just to keep the bow to the waves. Smugglers have used Dur, generally, since the stretch of beach in question is government reserve. So Cenedi informs me.”
“Trust every local youth to have been onthat beach,” Cenedi said. “Nandiin, we had not relied on holding Dur, because its beaches are too broad and it’s a wooded, populated island rife with smugglers’ caches the locals don’t want found. We believe a landfall on the Aidin headland would be far safer for the rebels. We do not have sufficient resources in Aidin to prevent a landing at village airstrips or movement at train stations or other routes that might bring Hanks-paidhi into friendly hands. If she comes by air she could possibly come in at the city airport at Wiigin and leave by train without our people being able to prevent her. But if she comes by boat—and we hope our heavy air activity up over Wiigin has discouraged an air route and forced her to that—we know now it will be a small boat, and thatcan’t reach Wiigin. There’s been a diplomatic snag in clearance for freighters, ours or theirs, to leave Mospheiran ports: the aiji has withdrawn permits as of yesterday. They’ve been warned, and they’re a cautious breed. The last freighter in transit turned back to Mospheira this morning. If another leaves port, we can spot it. A small boat, however, has a good chance of getting through the net unseen, and they know that.”
That freighter ban was very serious, Bren thought. Extremely serious, following the pattern of the attack on Mospheira the rebel radio had foretold. Atevi would be using surveillance planes out over the strait, probably overflying the harbors and provoking more alarm. The aiji did have customs boats, a number with guns of a range and power sufficient to sink another ship.
Mospheira also had such boats. There was a danger of confrontation if this state of crisis went on too long. “What does the presidentsay?”
“There is a protest from the Trade Office regarding the aiji’s action,” Banichi said. “If they’re officially aware of Hanks-paidhi’s provocations, they’re being very quiet about the matter. There’s no signal they’re willing to correct the problem.”
“One suspects they areaware,” Bren said, and was conscious he now contemplated treason; his stomach knotted up—but so did his nerves, from years of coping with the administration. “But they’re not very brave, dowager-ji. They’ll please their contributors until the first consequences show up where the voters can find out. Then their attention will be on keeping the voters from finding out and keeping their contributors from being exposed. They’ll pull back. The main thing is keeping the customs boats away from each other. That’s where people at lower levels could worsen the crisis.”
“If they link up with Direiso,” Ilisidi said, “she’ll lead them on much more precipitate courses.”
Or she’ll be driven mad with frustration trying to deal with the Mospheiran government, Bren thought. Unless Direiso planned to invade Mospheira if she became aiji.
Which was not a joke. Direiso might indeed have such a notion. The island was ill-prepared to resist, precisely as it had been ill-prepared and ineptly led in the War of the Landing. It was, potentially, the same situation: a mushrooming crisis and most of the human population in slumberous disregard of the danger of a rebel ateva seizing power and running with it.
The same way one decree from Tabini’s pen had swept away all debate, all studies, all partisan delays in relocating Patinandi Aerospace and reconfiguring the space program, so events around them now could replace Tabini, who tolerated humans, with Direiso, who would wipe them off the face of the earth.