“Mother…”
“You listen to me, Bren Cameron! I know what’s going on with you and that atevi woman! It’s not right!”
“Mother, where are you?” He was appalled that she knew, but more appalled to think she might be in a hallway, at a public phone. “Don’t say that out loud. Don’t raise your voice.”
“Are you ashamed? Does it worry you?”
“It worries me when my mother might be saying things in a public corridor. It worries me for her safety if the extremists get themselves stirred up again because some damned rumor gets started—talk like that won’t help Durant, either. Hush! Be still. Listen to me…”
“You really don’t want to hear it, do you? You know Barb always loved you. She married that fool Paul because you broke her heart. You hurt her, Bren, and she was sorry, and oh, no, you were too self-righteous, too damned important with your fancy estate to take her back.”
“I never promised to marry her. I don’t love her, Mother! I’m sorry to say it under these circumstances, but I don’t love her. I never loved her, she didn’t love me; we slept together. That was the end of it. I tried to have something else, and she was the one who wanted something different.”
“You don’t knowwhat she felt! You weren’t here! You were traipsing about the continent acting as if you were some atevi lord! She decided to marry. To marry, respectably, as sensible people do when they want to have normal lives.”
“I don’t have a normal life.”
“She was scared, Bren, she was scared and she was hurt—personally hurt, by the things you’d done. If you asked her to divorce Paul, she’d be there in a moment.”
Dealing with his mother was like running a course under fire… and he feared his mother would tell Barb there was hope of having him back, wreck Barb’s marriage, drive Paul off when Barb needed him, and hurt Barb more than she’d been. Most of all, he couldn’t hold that out to Barb… because he wouldn’t beback and Barb, all she valued and all she wanted to be, her fashion, her nightclub glamour, all the things she loved… didn’t exist on this side of the sea.
“I can’t marry her. End of statement. It’s not a time to debate it.”
“How can you be like this? You’d come home. You’d show up on a weekend, ask Barb to drop all her plans and go running off to some hotel, with the news people all trying to find you, and then you’d be gone, and then the news people wouldfind where you’d been and Barb would have to duck out and lock herself in her apartment for weeks, Bren, sometimes in fear of her life!”
“I know that.” It was true, Barb had played international intrigue as part of the shining, glittering game, until it turned bloody; and now his mother was working herself back into tears. He tried to get his point through while there was still rational thought to hear it. “But I can’t help that. I can’t helpthat, Mother; listen to me! The president’s guard does look out for you. If there are spies at the hospital now, they’re official. They probably are at the hospital right now. I want you to call Shawn Tyers. You know how.”
“Don’t you hang up on me!”
“Mother, you know I love you. That’s the way things are. Call Shawn. Call Paul… I know you don’t want to, but do it! Then go home, get some rest.
“Mother, what was between us is still herbusiness and my business. Give me credit that I know Barb, I know her damned well, and I can’t help her by getting involved in her life and ripping that up a second time.”
“Bren, don’t be like this.”
“I’m sorry as hell for what happened. It makes me sick to think of it. But I can’t fix it, and don’t you dare tell her I love her, don’t you dare tell her there’s any hope of my coming now. There isn’t. You’ll just hurt her. Do you hear me, Mother? Go home! I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
“Promise to call Barb.”
“I will notpromise to call Barb. I’ve got to go now.”
“Bren, call her.”
“Mother, go home. Good night. I love you.”
He hung up. He was aware of Jago in the doorway of the security station, aware of the fact some words were in her understanding and Banichi’s, at least of his side of the conversation.
“Barb’s had an accident,” he said. “A bus hit her. My mother fell down and hurt herself. Barb’s in the hospital. There’s nothing I can do from here.” They didn’t understand love, they didn’t understand the intricate details of failed human relationships, but they knew attachment persisted. Most of all they knew loyalty, and the urge to go to the scene of trouble. “There’s nothing I can do.”
Banichi said solemnly. “The aiji can request action of the President of Mospheira, and Shawn-nandi. Shall we do that?”
Tabini could do so much; and so damned little. “Not for this. Toby’s not home yet. Patch me through to his house, Banichi-ji. I’ll leave a message.”
Banichi pushed buttons. The communications interface was a great deal easier than it had been, with security codes that automatically engaged when the messages crossed the straits. Even at this hour, the Mospheiran system produced an operator, better than in prior days, and the call went on its way to the north coast, where Toby’s answering system cut in.
Bren was in some part relieved. It was easier to unburden the matter to a machine. He was sure their mother had put one of those nerve-jarring Call me’son Toby’s system, and he hoped his message might at least advise Toby what the matter was, if their mother fell out of contact before Toby ran off into the night trying to hire a plane.
“Mother seems fine” he began his message, experienced in years of long-distance crises. “Scrapes and bruises, as I gather. Barb’s in the hospital, Mother’s with her. A pretty bad accident with a bus, and Mother saw it, might have been in front of it. She wants some comfort. Toby, I know you just got home, I hate like hell to drop this on you, but I’m behind a security wall at the moment and I absolutely can’t get back there. I don’t think you need to fly back, just give Mother a call at…” Professional coolness wavered. “I don’t know what hospital.” Their mother was probably one of the few people outside the government who didn’t have forwarding on their calls: security precaution. And she was one of the very few, inside or out, who wasn’t completely aware of all the security arrangements that surrounded them. He couldn’t call her security and ask where she was. He hoped to God they knew and that his mother and Barb hadn’t gotten whisked away out of security’s sight. “She didn’t tell me what hospital.” He covered the microphone. “Banichi-ji. Get the origination on that call from my mother.”
Banichi pushed buttons, wrote on a slip of paper, handed it to him.
“It’s Central City,” he said into the phone. He was relieved. He knew the number by heart. “Look, just give her a call through the hospital system, and if she’s not there, call the apartment. It’s possible Barb pushed Mother out of the way of a bus. She’s really shaken. Barb’s critical. God, I’m sorry, Toby, I’m really sorry. I wish to God I didn’t have to put this on your shoulders.”
Toby, however, wasn’t there to assure him it was all right, or that some disaster hadn’t delayed Toby and his family. There were watchers around Toby, too, all the same. Agents followed the kids to school. It was what the government had to do… what he thanked God they did, because the whole question of atevi/human relations provoked every borderline crazy in existence, on Mospheira and on the mainland. Even someone the random lunatics thought might be connected to him, like his former secretaries, had to have constant protection on the island… it went against Mospheiran law to round up the lunatics until they’d actually done something.