“The pilot of the plane. And I accept his good will. Assure him so. I have no time for a meeting.”
“If not the front door, the back,” Banichi muttered. “He isyoung, nadi.”
“Should I not accept his good will?” he asked.
“Young,” Banichi said. “And a fool. But, yes. Accept it. Nand’ Dasibi advises you very well in everything.”
“And,” Dasibi said, clearly pleased, “a message from the aiji-dowager’s staff, saying there is no need for a response, but that she will conclude her winter season with a brief visit to the capital, and that she will see you, nand’ paidhi, at your convenience.”
“Delighted,” he said, and was, from the time he’d heard it from Tabini, whose protestations about the dowager as a force in politics were frequent, half in jest and half not.
Himself, he’d been very sorry to think of Ilisidi going back to Malguri and particularly of his having no chance at all to see her, perhaps for a very long time, once she settled into the estate she best loved and once she settled deep into the local politics. The most recent turmoil around Malguri had been the dropping of bombs and the launching of shells. They were provincial lords of the eastern end of the Western Association, lords neighboring Ilisidi’s mother’s home—lords whose tangled thesis was that the paidhi, the aiji in Shejidan, andthe human President were all involved in conspiracy to deprive atevi of their rights.
They were the same nuisances who had it that Tabini and everyone involved had known the ship was about to appear.
And some diehard theorists stillmaintained there was not only a spaceship secretly already built on the island of Mospheira, but that it was constantly coming and going—which wasn’t true, but nothing including showing the lords in question the output of the radar dishes that guarded the whole maritime coast would dissuade them from their belief in conspiracy against them. First, they weren’t capable of reading the data; second, they would declare it was being falsified by some technical system so elaborate it would have made building a spaceship all but superfluous; and third, they were determinedto believe it was conspiracy, and therefore it was conspiracy even if they had to invoke secret bases on the moon or mind-warping rays sent down from the station at night. The point was, they wanted to believe in conspiracy and their own political situation was a lot better and easier to maintain if there were one.
The fact that Ilisidi, whom these lords knew well and generally believed had the education to read the data, also had the brains to read the situation in Shejidan and the experience to read the truth in the paidhi had not persuaded the diehards. It had only persuaded Ilisidi, so she’d said to him, that the lords she led were not going to follow her further if she didn’t convince them by the force of her presence. Herpolitics revolved relatively simply on the wish to retain some areas of the world untouched by industry and some aspects of atevi culture untouched by human influence.
Oddly enough she’d found the paidhi an ally in that agenda.
So the woman, Tabini’s grandmother, who’d almost been aiji of Shejidan on several occasions, must, as she’d put it to him at their parting last fall, go pour water into the ocean: meaning she wouldn’t enjoy the work of politics in Malguri. But it was, she’d said, work which needed doing, and it aimed at mending attitudes and regional prejudices which had sadly cost lives and threatened livelihoods. It was work that she could do—uniquely, could do—though he had a great personal regret for seeing Ilisidi spend her efforts on provinces when they needed her as Tabini’s unadmitted right hand on a national level.
Evenif Tabini complained of her interference.
“Tell her—” he began, completely undaunted by the statement no reply was requested. Then he changed his mind a second time. “Pen and paper, nadi, please.”
He had one of his message cylinders in his pocket. He traveled with one. He sat down at a table and wrote, in his own hand,
I am delighted by the prospect you present and would gladly scandalize your neighbors, though I fear by now they have fled the paint and the hammering. Please find the occasion in your busy schedule of admirers to receive me or, at any time you will, please do not hesitate to call upon me.
That would remove any doubt of Ilisidi’s welcome to walk into the apartment at her will, and if uncle Tatiseigi was going to pay a call on him, damn, sheknew the man, and could judge better than he could what might constitute a rescue. She might even intervene: as Tabini had said, she and he did get along, and her presence at any formal viewing might be an asset. Hecouldn’t choose the guests for an Atageini soiree, but let Tatiseigi try to keep Ilisidi from doing as she pleased—as soon try to stop a river in its course.
He had his seal, too, and the office provided the wax. He put the finished message into nand’ Dasibi’s hands, spoke his usual few words to the staff.
“Nand’ paidhi,” Banichi said, attracting his attention. “The news services.”
He had, in some measure, rather deal with Uncle.
But the mere thoughtof Ilisidi had waked up his wits in sheer self-defense, and that was, considering where he was going, all to the good.
It was down the corridor then, and into that area near the great halls of the two houses of the legislature, the commons, which was the hasdrawad, and the house of lords, which was the tashrid. Last year, for the first time on atevi television, a human face had brought into atevi homes a presence which atevi children had once feared and now wrote letters to in the thousands. Last year he’d appeared on tape. This year his press conferences went live. A room across from the tashrid was set up as an interview center—that crowd of microphones and cameras was another accoutrement of notoriety, and of life close to the place where decisions were made. Lines snaked into the little room so that one had to walk very gingerly. The place bristled with microphones surrounding the seat he would take.
He allowed all the paraphernalia he had collected, the computer (which rarely left him) and the notes and the various small items with which he had become burdened in the clerical office, into the hands of junior security, and let Banichi see him to his place and stand near him.
He settled in, blinded by the lights. He waited, hands folded on the table that supported the microphones, until the signal.
“Nand’ paidhi,” the first reporter began, and wended through the convolute honors and courtesies before the question, a circuitous approach calculated, he sometimes thought, to let the paidhi fall asleep or start wit-wandering.
The question when it finally emerged from the forest of titles, was: “Having just returned from touring the plants and facilities supporting the space program, are you confident that atevi and human construction are of equal importance and on equal footing with the ship?”
“I am very confident,” was his automatic answer. It gave him a running start toward: “But not just that we are on an equal basis with Mospheira, nadiin: atevi are well-advanced toward the goal of space flight and may actually be in the lead in the race for space. It’s not a position in which one dares slacken one’s effort. We don’t know what delays may arise. But I am encouraged that we have made vast progress.” He was very glad to report nationally that the aiji’s monumental risk of capital was producing results: success bred stability—and complacency—he had to avoid that extreme, too. “I am very encouraged about the future of the program.”