He tried not to flinch or to blush. Tabini was amused and Damiri’s mouth courted dimples one after the other. “So my security tells me,” he returned dryly, and was immediately aghast at himself. He’d twice now gotten direly reckless with atevi lords, but he drew a laugh from Tabini, who’d, in point of fact, challenged him.
In truth, the paidhi sat outside the system of lords and inheritance, and couldn’t possibly challenge Tabini in any sense that mattered.
“My uncle will not lodge with you, nand’ paidhi, be assured so.” That from Damiri-daja, and quite soberly. “Only be very careful. I ask you, be careful of him. He is in some ways delicate in constitution and more delicate in sensibilities.”
“He’s in all ways an unreasonable old man,” Tabini muttered. “It would be indecorous to file Intent on him, but, gods less felicitous! He does try me.—How, by the by, is the peninsular society this season? I hear you took advantage of lord Geigi’s hospitality.”
“He was a very good host and wishes you well, aiji-ma.”
“Well he should. Well, well, I’ll have your report of him. I trust you have it in preparation.”
“My staff does, yes, aiji-ma.”
“The plague of Uncle descends tomorrow—”
Tomorrow! he thought, and did not say.
“—barring rain,” Tabini said, “which I am told prevents the paint from drying completely enough. And the weather report is clear.—If you charm this impossible man, Bren, I do swear I’ll make you a ministerial department.”
“I doubt that I can do so much.” The relationship between the Atageini and the aiji’s house was already such that the aiji himself couldn’t stall the man or his questions, and probably many of those questions (except the peninsular assassination) involved two humans guesting on the property.
He’d enlist the staff to keep Jase and Tatiseigi separated. Saidin might do it. Saidin might have far more luck than the aiji of Shejidan, in that matter.
No one, it seemed, could tell uncle Tatiseigi no—and, technically speaking, he supposed no one could do so legally in the matter of the impending visit. What he had heard of the shouting in the hall indicated something truly beyond Tabini’s control, unless Tabini wished to take extreme action.
The old man was going to push that situation. And Tabini. Which was one thing considering interpersonalrelations. But this was two clans involved. And Damiri.
Wonderful place for two humans to be standing. And impeccable timing. Jase wasn’t up to this.
“One can still wish for rain,” Tabini said. “So. Bren.—What aboutGeigi?”
Now it came down to the matter on which the aiji wished to be informed—officially speaking. It came down to Geigi’s good reputation and the reputation of all the workers in that plant and in all the other labs and plants he’d visited, who relied on him to represent their work, their good will, and all the things they’d tried to demonstrate to him. He tried to collect his scattered wits and represent them well.
“So when will it fly?” Tabini asked him bluntly. Early on, it had been, Willit fly?
“Ahead of schedule, by some few months, aiji-ma, I still maintain so, until and unless we find some problem that delays us the months we allowed for such events.”
“But as yet no such problem exists.” Tabini rested his chin again on his hand and looked satisfied. “It might have arisen, understand. Now such an interruption is far less likely.”
He was so busy thinking of engineering details he didn’t take Tabini’s meaning immediately.
Then he did.
“Saigimi did not want that ship to fly,” Tabini said. “He viewed it as a means to bring down the government. He was wrong. His assassins did not reach Geigi and they did not reach the director of Patinandi Aerospace. So you had a very quiet trip.”
“Yes, aiji-ma.”
“You noticed nothing untoward.”
“No, aiji-ma.”
“Good,” Tabini said. “As it should have been.”
10
The interview with Tabini had gone relatively quickly, and on a day interrupted by phone calls and upsetting news of the Atageini visit—to hisapartment—Bren was hardly surprised.
That left him time to go back to the apartment before the television interview, or, on the other hand, time to visit the office down in the legislative wing and to pay a courtesy call on his staff.
He might, he decided, accidentally interrupt Jase’s phone call if he went back to the apartment: Jase had to make his call either from the library or from the security station, and the library venue had been so hard to predict regarding noise from the reconstruction (hammering would begin at the damnedest times, and the staff would go running, trying to silence the culprits) that he rather imagined Jase would use the security office phone near the front hall out of force of habit.
Which didn’t need the confusion of the front door opening and closing and the servant staff running about.
So he opted for the office downstairs, where his clerical staff maintained a dike against the flood of correspondence. It was a rare honor, the dedication of one of the three available offices inside the Bu-javid, ‘for security reasons,’ as he’d heard, meaning that he tended to visit the clerical office often and that his security and Tabini’s didn’t want the paidhi going to the building that was the other option, down the hill to what was officially called the Maganuri Annex Building. It had been built in haste among the hotels at the foot of the historic real estate, and it probably forecast the trend: the governmental complex was starting to sprawl, and the last rank of intruders, the hotels, were, only since last year, starting to crowd the residential areas, which the Planning Commission wouldn’t have.
So there was to be a new subway link to a hotel district being built on the city outskirts. Tabini’s enemies pointed to the growth of government.
But those same enemies supported the creation of various commissions and agencies that kept the aiji from making autocratic decisions, which was the alternative. And they required more offices and more hotels. He’d warned Tabini against more committees. Tabini had been willing to let the power go last year, saying that certain things needed more study than his staff could give it.
But now Tabini was looking with a very suspicious eye at some of the commercial interests that had crept in with agendas which had no place in the traditional structure, agendas being backed by some of the lords. That office building out there, the Maganuri Building, built to house the study committees proposed by the legislators opposed to the growth of government, was beginning to be plagued by sewer and electrical problems. The opposition blamed sabotage by Tabini’s agents, or by the old aristocracy, a widerange of conspiracy indeed, and no few of the commons avoided it and wouldn’t attend committee meetings there because of the reputed bad numbers.
Others said it was built on a battlefield (it was) and that the dead troubled it. Oddly enough, the surrounding hotels and businesses had never had such difficulties.
So the paidhi was quite glad to be honored by the office he had, and not to have to take the subway down the hill, or to the edge of town—where according to the latest rumors, the construction, since the folded space controversy had set certain numerologists playing with an expanded deck, was also plagued by bad numbers, which might even halt construction.
Certain numerologists were suggesting that the number of state offices be shrunk, and the whole thing be cast back to the system whence it had blossomed, tossing the responsibility for information-gathering back into the hands of lords and representatives, who, in the old days, might suffer personal disgrace if they handed in bad information. The names of lords authoring reports previously had been permanently attached to the measures they proposed and the results, good or bad, had remained theirresponsibility.