“In what manner can one confirmman’chi, nadi, if I may ask such a question? Please decline to answer if I cross some line of decency.”
“An expression, nand’ paidhi. It’s an expression. One visits the household. One remembers. One assembles the living members of the household, for one thing, to know where their man’chi may lie now that this man’chi is put away. The household has to be rebuilt.”
“The man’chi to the dead man is put away.”
“Into the earth, nand’ paidhi, or into the fire. One can only have man’chi to the living.”
“Never to the dead?” He watched a lot of machimi plays, in the standard of which man’chi and its nuances was the pivot-point of treachery and action, double-crosses and last-moment decisions. “In the plays, nadi, this seems possible.”
“If one believes in ghosts.”
“Ah.” It was a belief some atevi held.
And more had believed in them, as a matter of course, in the ancient world of the machimi plays. Such a belief in the supernatural didn’t include the two men present with him, he was quite sure. But belief in ghosts of course would tie directly into whether or not the dead could still claim loyalty.
“Also,” Algini said in his quiet way, “the living will exact a penalty from living persons who might have been responsible. This does notrequire a belief in ghosts. But in the old days, one might equally well exact a penalty of the dead.”
He was curious. It went some distance toward explaining certain machimi, in which there seemed to be some actions of venerating or despising monuments and bones, heaving them into rivers and the like.
But it wasn’ta solution for the problem he had. “Jase is upset,” Bren said, “because he can’t reach his home or assure himself his mother is well.” One didn’t phrase a question in the negative: atevi, if cued that one expected a negative, would helpfully agree it wasn’t likely. “Would security be concerned for an ateva’s actions under such a circumstance?”
“If this death was due to another person,” Algini said, “one would expect to watch him carefully.”
“Or if this death dissolved essential man’chi,” Tano said, “A wife, for instance. Her clan would be free to act. A set of cousins ambitious to transfer man’chi to theirline. The family could break apart.”
“Would he—” He knew these men well enough to ask about very delicate, ordinarily undiscussed, matters. “Would an ateva under such circumstances feelsuch man’chi to the cousins, say, if they succeeded in transferring the clan’s man’chi to themselves and away from his father’s line?”
“Not necessarily,” Algini said and, rare for him, a dark frown came to his face.
That warned him that perhaps he’d touched something more than theoretical with Algini. Or perhaps just inquired into too delicate an area of atevi emotion. So he asked no further.
And because it was necessary meticulously to inform the ones who guarded Jase: “Jase would like to go back to the ship to assure himself of his mother’s welfare. This he of course can’t do. Hesays he wished to call the ship and was prevented because, he says, he couldn’t get through security to reach me to authorize it. I can only guess. He does follow rules and schedules meticulously. Perhaps this results from living on a ship in space. I don’t know. And he may have been unwilling to face atevi with his emotions out of control—I’ve told him very emphatically not to do that. It may have prevented him from fully explaining his distress to security.” It was a cold and an embarrassing thing, to try to dice human feelings so finely that another mindset could grasp logically what was going on. “I would guess that he was already exhausted, either emotionally upset since I left or trying to achieve a good result—even my approval—on my return; and suddenly an emotional blow has hit him when he was alone, immersed in a strange language, surrounded by strange faces, and under my instruction not to react emotionally with atevi.”
“Ah,” Tano said, and both atevi faces showed comprehension. Of what—God knew.
“Remember,” he said, “that this is a human being, and that this is not trulyman’chi he feels but something as central to his being. Understand that he is under very extreme stress, and he’s trying not to react. But I have serious questions, nadiin, about the propriety of humans on that ship toward him, who may have slighted him in a major way. I want to know whether the ship tried to contact him, I want to know where that message went if someone attempted to contact him, and why he had to hear this bad news finally relayed from the island, from Yolanda Mercheson.”
“To whom has he attributed this failure of information?” Tano asked.
“I would assume, perhaps unjustly, to Manasi himself.” Manasi was one of Tabini’s security, who’d moved in to run the security office when he had Tano and Algini off with him. “He suspects atevi have withheld it from him. This is much more palatable to him than the thought that his people did. But whatever the truth is, whether it leads to atevi or to his ship, I need to knowthe truth, no matter how much truth I later decide to tell him.”
“Nadi Bren,” Algini said, “we will find the answer. We received no call from staff regarding any such matter.”
“Nadiin,” he said, “I have every confidence in you. I have every confidence in nand’ Dasibi and in nand’ Manasi. Please express it in your inquiry—please accuse no one. I leave it all to your discretion.”
Look not to his clerical staff for fault, and not to Manasi, he strongly felt, rather to the aiji’s staff on the coast, at Mogari-nai, where the great dish drank down messages from space and relayed them supposedly without censorship to him and through him to Jase. There had been politics at Mogari-nai, somewhere in the administration of that facility, which had withheld information from him on prior occasions, even against Tabini’s orders. It was a tangled matter of loyalties which one hoped, but not trusted, had been rectified last fall.
Look even—one could think it—to Tabini himself, who might have ordered the interception and withholding of that message for various reasons, including the reason that Bren-paidhi wasn’t at hand to handle the matter and they couldn’t know how Jase would react.
But Tabiniwould certainly have no difficulty reaching Tano and Algini if Manasi thought Jase was about to blow up.
Information stalled in the system? Some message lying on a desk awaiting action? Perhaps. He was sure that the messages at Mogari-nai were gone over meticulously by atevi who could translate—and any personal message to Jase, as opposed to the usual routines, would raise warning flags, and possibly go to higher security, which could appreciably slow down transmission.
“Nadiin,” he said, because he knew the extreme good will of these two men, and the conflict it might pose them, “if this thread should go under the aiji’s door, advise me but leave it untouched. It will be my concern.”
“Bren-ji, one will immediately advise you if that should be the case.”
That from Tano, with no demur from his partner. Their man’chi was to Tabini, to him only throughTabini, and what they said was with the understanding, unspoken, that he knew and that they knew that certain atevi damned well understood Mosphei’ and the dialect of the ship.
He suspected most of all that troublesome elements existed somewhere within the defense organization that protected the coast; and that such might have interfered, again, at Mogari-nai—or here, within the walls of the Bu-javid.