But he wantedthe phone call. Ilisidi gave him leave. And might learn more than he could—or than she could with him attached.
He cast a worried look around for Jase, who was quietly in the corner, talking to his security and having no difficulty. Jago was watching him, and he coasted past Jago on the way to the door. “A phone call’s come from the island,” he said. “I’m going to the office. I’ll be right back.”
“Yes,” Jago said, and tailed himas far as the door, when he’d been so bothered he hadn’t even twigged to the possibility of a set-up to draw himto disaster. She stayed close, stationing herself in the hall as he went the short distance to the private office, at the door of which the servant stood.
He went in and picked up the phone. “Hello?” he said. “This is Bren Cameron.”
“ Bren, this is Toby.” It was a tone of voice he almost didn’t know. “ I thought I’d better call.”
“Damn right you’d better call. How are you? How’s Mother?”
A pause that said far too much. “ Heart attack. Small one. How are you?”
It was better than his worst fears. His knees weren’t doing so well. He sat down. “I’m doing fine. Tell her that. Listen. I want you to call Barb and have her call me.”
“ No. No! You get yourself home, Bren. You want your damn business carried on, you come do it, andyou come back and take care of the things you need to take care of! Stop asking your family to put up with this kind of crap! Mama’s having surgery this week. She wantsyou, Bren. She wants you to be here.”
“I can’t.”
“ I can’t be up here in the city, either, but I’m doing it! I can’t leave my house and my business, but I’m doing it! Jill can’t answer the phone without lunatics harassing her! We’ve had to leave home and all come up here, and I can’t let my family go down the street to the park! You know what put mama in the hospital, Bren? You did. People throwing paint on her building, the landlord saying he wants her to move—”
He tried to think through the things he didn’t want to hear to the things he hadto hear—while remembering agencies on both sides of the water were recording everything. “Toby. Call my office. Ask Shawn—”
“ I’ve done that! I can’t get through! None of the numbers you’ve given me work any more, and I don’t even know whether Shawn’s in office this week, by what I’m hearing in the papers!”
“What’s in the papers, Toby? They don’t exactly—”
“ No, no, no! I’m not doing your work for you! I’m yourbrother, not a clerk in the State Department! And I want you back here, Bren. I want you back here for mama! One week, one miserableweek, that’s all I want!”
“I can’t.”
“ The hell you can’t! Tell the aiji your mother coulddie, dammit, and she’s asking for you!”
“Toby—”
“ Oh— hell, I forgot. You can’t explain feelings, can you? They’re not wired for it. Well, what about you, Bren? Is it all the office, and nothing for your family?”
“Toby.”
“ I don’t want your excuses, Bren. I’ve covered for you and covered for you and not told you the truth because it’d upset you. Well, now I’m telling you the truth, and mama’s in danger of her life and I can’t take my family home, and I’m scared to death they’re going to burn my house down while I’m gone!”
“Just hang on, Toby. Just a little longer.”
“ I can’t! I’m not willing to, dammit! I’m tired of trying to explain what the hell you’re doing! We can’t explain it toourselves anymore— how inhell do we make it make sense to the neighbors!”
“You know damn well what the score is, Toby. Don’t hand me that. You knowwhat’s going on in the government and what game they’re playing.”
“ What are you talking about? What are you talking about, Bren? Thatwe’re the enemy, now?”
“I’m saying call Shawn!”
“ I’m saying Shawn’s number doesn’t work anymore and the police won’t answer our emergency calls, Bren, try that one! You’re not damn popular, and they’re taking it out on my family and our mother!”
“Wrong. Wrong, Toby! It’s not the whole island, it’s a handful of crawling cowards that on a bright day—”
“ These are ourneighbors, Bren. These are myneighbors that aren’t speaking to me, people I’ve known for ten years!”
“Then get yourself a new set of friends, Toby!”
“ That doesn’t work for mama, Bren, that doesn’t work in the building she’s lived in for all these years and now they don’t want her any more. What does thatdo to her, Bren? What do you say to that?”
“It’s a rotten lot of people you’ve fallen for.”
“ What are you talking about? What are you talking about, Bren? I don’t understand you.”
He grew accustomed to silence on his feelings. He was a translator, a technical translator, by necessity a diplomat, by cooption a lord of the atevi Association. And he spoke out of hurt and anger on the most childish possible level, maybe because that was the mental age this argument touched, the last time he and Toby hadaccessed what they felt. Toby had moved out to the coast. He’d thought then, and still thought, it was to put space between Toby and their mother. He’dgone into University, and aptitudes had steered him toward what the job was supposed to be, which hadn’t been this.
“Tell mama I love her,” he said, and hung up on his brother.
That little click of the receiver broke the vital connection, and he knew there wasn’t a way to get it back. The training didn’t let expression reach his face. The training didn’t let him do anything overt. He just sat there a moment, with an atevi lady’s office coming back into focus around him, and the sounds of the party going on above the silence that click had created, and with the knowledge he had to get up and function with very dangerous people and go be sure Jase was all right.
And he had to finish his talk with Ilisidi, somehow, get the wit organized to regain that mood and that moment and do his job.
If you couldn’t do anything about a vital matter, you postponed it. You put it in a mental box and shut the lid on it and didn’t think about it when there was a job to do.
And once he’d done that, damn it! He was mad at Toby, who knewthings about the government Toby could have told him, critical things, and Toby hadn’t, wouldn’t, no matter whether peace or war could hinge on it. Toby’s peace was unsettled, Toby’s life was put out of joint, Toby came at him with personalgrievances of a sort the family had once known to keep away from him—which Toby could have been man enough to hold to himself this week and handle, dammit, since there wasn’t and wouldn’t be anything he could do from where he was.