"Thank you," he said to Banichi. "Did I say thank you? I meant to."
"My —"
"— job. Yes, dammit. I know that. But prefer me just adequately, Banichi-ji, to Hanks-paidhi."
"Fervently so, Bren-ji."
"Still too little," he said. "Still too little, Banichi. I'd have let you shoot me before I took a chance it wasn't you tonight. Does that reassure you?"
"Far from it."
"Then you worry about it, Banichi-ji. I'm far too tired to."
"It's my job," Banichi said, infallibly, reliably numb to human feelings, missing the point. "You're quite right. We should keep you better informed."
The knot in his throat didn't go down. But there wasn't a solution. There wasn't a translation. Not in the paidhi's vocabulary. Not in the dictionary.
Banichi turned out the lights with, "If there are alarms tonight, trust I'll answer them, Bren-ji. And stay in bed."
Atevi asked what hecouldn't feel, either. He supposed it might bother them just as much. Atevi hadn't a word for lonely.
There was something like orphan.
There was something like renegade.
Otherwise they couldn't bealone — and knew, better than humans, he supposed, why they did things. Psychiatry was a science they hadn't practiced, and still didn't, possibly because no atevi would confide outside his man'chi, possibly because, among them, there was just pathology.
And, ever popular, solving all possible mental health problems — bloodfeud.
Or whatever atevi actually felt that answered to that ancient human word.
Possibly he'd troubled Banichi's sleep tonight. Possibly he'd made Banichi ask himself questions for which Banichi had fewer words than he did. If there was indeed some secret atevi dictionary of human language, Banichi might be consulting it tonight and asking himself what the paidhi had meant.
He'd kept after Banichi until he knew not only that everyone he cared for was safe — but as far as he could, until he knew to his satisfaction, wherethey were; which possibly wasn't love, just a neurotic desire to have them all in a predictable place for the night so he could shut his eyes.
But he couldn't shake the punched-in-the-gut feeling he'd felt when he and Banichi started talking about loyalties, and he'd seen how far he'd gone from safety in his dealings, how much, God help him, he needed, and kept telling himself wasn't — ever — going to be there for him. He'd known it when he'd gone into the job, and he'd known in the unscarred, unmuddied wisdom of youth that he'd one day meet the emotional wall, of whatever nature, in whatever remote time of his career, and remember where he'd been heading and why.
Needwas such a seductive, dangerous word. Needwas the vacancies. Needwasn't, dammit, love, not in any sense. If love was giving, it was the opposite of love, it drank love dry, it sucked logic after it, and it didn't ever output. Barb was need. She'd tried to become hisneed, and he'd seen that shipwreck coming.
Then he'd gotten himself the possibility of a backup in Graham, if Graham made it down safely. And the shaky character of his dealings with Banichi, who knew how to forgive him, at least, told him he hadto pull himself together or hand Jase Graham the keys to his soul, which Jase might not be good enough or benign enough not to use. Jago touched him, not in an unknowing way, and he hadn't, in small idle seconds, forgotten the feeling of her hands, the sensation that shivered through his nerves and said… he needed. He wanted not to have been responsible. He wanted Jago to have ignored warnings and gone ahead with… whatever atevi did with their lovers, which had become in his thoughts a burning curiosity.
Jago… and Ilisidi. He'd made a place in his human affections for the woman with all her edges and all her secrets — he'd ignored all the rules, even given her a piece of human loyalty that must have, in some intrusive way, taken Ilisidi herself by surprise and sent her judgment of him skittering off at angles no ateva could figure, as if he'd touched on man'chiand given a chivalrously honorable — aristocratically possessive? — old ateva a real quandary of the spirit. Like Tabini, he suspected, she'd tried to figure him, adjusted her behavior to fit her conceptions of hisaction, and gone off into that same unmapped territory of mutually altered behavior that he and Tabini wandered.
His fault and not hers. Ilisidi was angry with him. Jago, thanks only to Jago, could take care of herself. Jago hadtaken care of herself and walked out when he warned her. And Banichi knew. Banichi found everything out.
Or Jago had outright told him. Whatever that meant, in a relationship Bren had never puzzled out.
Damned fool, he said to himself. He heard people move about in the apartment, up and down the hall outside his bedroom. But he knew that Banichi knew who they were, and that no one moved there who Banichi didn't approve. So that was all right.
He heard the door open and close, very distantly. But, again, he expected comings and goings. He hoped it was good news. Or at least that bad news of whatever nature was being handled as well as it could be.
He had the damn code. Shawn or somebody had risked a great deal to get him a code that he didn't, on sober reflection, believe he'd gathered in his computer when he'd plugged in and sent out his Seeker.
He had a sure knowledge that Hanks' computer was in unauthorized hands, on Tabini's side or the opposition's. And that code Shawn had gone to great lengths to give him could, if it was what it seemed, blast through Mospheira's electronic obstructions and get at least one message to the right channels in the Foreign Office.
He had the remote unit plugged in. He could send that warning here, from his bedroom, without any need for lines, without tipping off more than the massive security he was sure Tabini mounted on his phone lines, that he had been in direct communication with Mospheira after the attack. But Tabini gave him all the latitude he wanted — an enviable position for a potential spy.
If that spy wanted to act, tipping off Mospheira that violence had happened in the Bu-javid, that Hanks was in foreign hands, possibly being interrogated, possibly being coerced to breach Mospheira's electronic defenses.
The aforesaid spy could also expect that Mospheira would lose no time relaying the information to the ship, who might delay the landing, or change the landing site, just the same as if he'd admitted on the phone that he was standing in the aftermath of a double murder and the kidnaping of a human representative.
In which light — he didn't send the warning to Mospheira. The aforesaid potential spy and employee of the Mospheiran government had to lie abed and not make a move more than he had, letting whatever happened to Deana happen, because Mospheira couldn't do a damned thing. His own security and Tabini's was the only chance Deana had for rescue, and if he made that call, as Shawn and other people pinning their careers on him might not understand in its emotional or logical context, Tabini could lose his gambit with the ship and Deana —
If they let her live, Deana could find herself in the position of paidhi to the opposition to Tabini, dammit.
Exactly the position she'd courted, if she lived to have the honor, if her bones held out — atevi didn't always exercise due caution — and if she could use her head.
God, she might callMospheira and say she'd been kidnaped with precisely the idea of aborting the landing. She might, in fact, work for the opposition. It might serve Mospheira very well.