"I take it this is not general knowledge."
"Common gossip. Not common knowledge, if the paidhi takes the difference in expressions."
"I do take it."
"This is a very dangerous time," Banichi said, "within the Association. Quite natural that stresses would tend to manifest. In Mospheiran affairs… likewise a time of change. As we understand." Banichi reached inside his jacket and pulled out a silver message cylinder. "Tabini asked us to brief you at least on the essentials of the neighbors. — And to destroy this andthe accompanying tape after you've read it."
Tabini's seal.
Damn, Bren thought, and took it with no little trepidation. He unrolled it, read, very simply put, after Tabini's heading,
Please observe great caution, do nothing to elude your security even for a moment. We expect a great deal of trouble, on very good advisement from very good sources.
The whereabouts of Hanks remains, specifically, a question. But we would not be surprised to find that she has been moved near Taiben, since the conspirators are few, their connections are strong in that vicinity, and they wish to bring as few as possible others of their fringes into public knowledge should matters go wrong for them. Certainly their more cautious supporters will not want to commit until and unless they demonstrate success.
I will not at all be surprised if individuals frequent in Hanks' association initiated the matter. She seems to be operating in some freedom. Banichi has a tape copy of a communication we intercepted on the mainland. Listen to it and see if you can make sense of it.
He expected, dammit, before Banichi gave him the tape and Jago got up and brought him a recorder to play it on, that the tape involved not ship-to-ground communications but very terrestrial connections indeed.
And that the front of the tape would be a great deal of computer chatter — as Deana's access code went through Mospheira's electronic barriers like a knife through butter.
Damn right her authorizations weren't pulled. Completely live. Completely credited, where they were going. He jacked in, captured-and-isolated, read-only, as scared of those codes near his computer as he would have been of a ticking bomb.
The text was, again foreseeably, scrambled. He tried three code sets with his computer before one clicked.
After that, text flowed on his screen.
Cameron has turned coat and threatened the ship with unspecified atevi hostilities in order to have them land under the aiji's control. He has meanwhile participated with the aiji's authority to place me under communications blackout and, I am warned by reliable sources, to have me assassinated. The motive is complex, resting in the aiji's ambitions to make the precedent of central control of dams, power grids, and rail apply to all natural resources, which will strip the provincial aijiin and the landholders of financial resources and centralize all international trade, with monopoly to the aiji in Shejidan, and consequently price controls which will considerably enrich the central government at the expense of local governments and rightful landholders.
Cameron has cooperated in this plan, whether wittingly or unwittingly, has actively backed the nationalization of resources, has suggested boycott as a tactic, has gone on a remarkable excursion to a remote observatory supported by the aiji of Shejidan and brought back a warped-space theory that I strongly believe is not based on atevi research, but on unauthorized translation of classified human mathematical concepts. This is calculated to disturb certain atevi conservative religious beliefs which are in stark contrast and political opposition to the aiji, who is not a believer in any philosophy, most particularly to throw certain provinces into religious upheaval and certain philosophical leaders into disrepute and disregard.
I am making this transmission from a secure base afforded me by the persons who have placed their lives in jeopardy by opposing this power grab on the part of the central government. In my judgment, we will do well to make this situation extremely clear to the representative from the ship if she in fact reaches Mospheira alive, which my informants suggest may not happen. The aiji may assassinate this individual and put the blame on his opposition. Since he clearly controls the Assassins' Guild, getting a filing against his political enemies at that point would be possible. This would also, I am informed, serve as a purge of the Guild, as all Guild members opposing his aims would very quickly find themselves targeted by the aiji's very extensive network.
I urge under the strongest terms that the government recall Cameron, revoke his authority and his codes, and demand an explanation of his actions, which are by no means in the interest of Mospheira, of the human population in general, or of atevi citizens. I do not know and cannot ascertain whether he is aware what he is aiding or to what purpose his advice and ability is being used, but I consider that my life is in present danger from agencies with whom he is working. Therefore I will move from place to place and attempt to preserve my usefulness in my job.
Please pass a message to my family that I am at the moment safe and well and protected by persons who have acted in behalf of their freedom and rights of self-determination.
He didn't swear. He didn't want expression to cross his face — he wasn't sure he was going to translate this message exactly, at this time, or in the foreseeable future. He rested his elbow on the armrest and his knuckle against his lip, thinking. He'd defined the beginning of the section; he defined the end; he captured, reran it, rereading to determine that, no, there was no hint of it being taken under duress, there were none of the words to signal that such was the case — and he'd hope, in a piece like that, to see words like discorrespondance, decorrelationary, or contrarecidivistic, that to a human eye didn't quite belong in typical text in the worst diplomatese — the standard freehand signal that the whole piece was under duress, always a worry when a note that explosive came in on computer-to-computer transmission.
But there was no such clue. He read it a third time simply to absorb the tenor and content, to try to strip out emotional reactions, and to ask himself honestly whether there was any remote, even astronomically remote or conceivable likelihood that Deana was actually right and he was wrong.
That Tabini's true aim in the current crisis was elimination of dissent.
No, dammit, it was notthe purpose of Tabini's actions. It was not the action of the aiji whose answer to rebels in Malguri had generally been understated, as witness Ilisidi's corroboration that things were settled; the aiji whose punitive use of the Guild had been, if at all during his administration, so covert as to be undetected. It was not the action of the aiji who, if reports were true, having perhaps assassinated his own father, at least declined to assassinate his grandmother, who was still in all accounts a very reasonable culprit in the demise of her son.