Inheritor Page 5

  But he felt a sharp vibration from his pocket-com as they started down the third tier of steps, and that flutter signaled him his security was wanting his attention or advising him to the negative — the latter, he decided, when Tano cast him a direct look and no encouraging if the paidhi would prefer regarding that invitation to a change in flight schedules and a return to the lord's residence.

  "I fear, nandi," Bren sighed, "that my schedule back in the capital precludes it." He had no warning in that small vibration of imminent danger. He took it for his staff's warning against lingering in public view or a simple advisement he was, with more urgency than anyone had yet communicated to him, expected elsewhere. "But if the invitation were extended again through your kindness, perhaps for some other seasonal game, I would be more than pleased, nand' Geigi, very truthfully."

  God, he wanted that holiday, and he liked-liked-liked lord Geigi against all common sense governing use of that deceptive and deadly word, and he didn't want to hear from his security that lord Geigi had changed sides again.

  He set foot on the floor of the assembly area and the battalion of reporters tried to reach him. But the frontal assault of cameras failed to breach his security, as Tano and Algini directed him and his entire party aside through the plant manager's office and up against the earnest good wishes of a woman who, like Borujiri, saw fortune and good repute in his visit.

  "Nand' paidhi!" She bowed, and proffered a card with a ribbon, white, for the paidhi, a card which the thoughtful staff had handed out to certain key people. There was the smell of heated wax, a wax-jack waiting in the office for that operation, and immediately lord Geigi and nand' Borujiri, and a number of other officials came pouring through the door with the news services clamoring outside.

  He signed and affixed his seal in wax to cards which would make a proud display on a wall somewhere for not only this generation, but subsequent ones, while his security fumed and clearly wished a quick exit. But there were moments at which haste seemed to create worse problems than apparent lack of it; and they hadn't yet flung him to the floor and drawn guns, so he supposed it wasn't critical.

  "The car is waiting, nand' paidhi," Tano said, the moment the last card was stamped.

  Escape lay out the door: the news services hadn't yet out-flanked them. Algini went out first, surveying the Guild-provided car which procedure had dictated would never leave the personal surveillance of the paidhi's own security. Tano held the door for him, a living shield against what he had no idea.

  For two seconds in that position they were without any locals at all in earshot. "Lord Saigimi is dead," Tano said to him, low and urgently. "Unknown who did it."

  So that was the emergency. Bren took in his breath, and in the next firing of a neuron thought it likely that lord Geigi, stalled on the other side of the same door, was getting exactly the same news from his security.

  The lord of the Tasigin Marid, the circle of seacoast at the bottom of the peninsula, was dead, not of natural causes.

  The lord of the Tasigin Marid, an Edi, was the one interest in the peninsula most violently opposed to the space program. When Geigi had sided with the space program, and when Deana Hanks had provided the bombshell that weakened him politically, lord Saigimi had immediately insisted that lord Geigi pay his personal debts in oil investment in full, which lord Saigimi expected would ruin lord Geigi and force him from power in Dalaigi.

  That had not been the case, thanks to Grigiji the astronomer.

  Geigi came out the door, sober, dead sober in the manner of an ateva when expression might offend someone. Not displeased by the news, Bren would wager. Possibly — the thought hit him like a thunderbolt — Geigi was even directly involved in the assassination.

  No. Geigi wouldn't. Surely not. Not with the aiji's representative literally under his roof and apt by that to be thought associated with the event.

  "News," Bren said, resolved on his own instant judgment to ignore suspicion and treat the man as a cohort — as in the following instant he asked himself was Tabini involved — while Tabini's representative was a guest under lord Geigi's roof. "Nandi, lord Saigimi has just been assassinated. I'm immediately concerned for your safety; and I must make my flight on schedule. I fear events have left me no choice but to attend to business, and place myself where I can interpret to the ship in case they have questions. But will you honor me and ride to the airport with me, in my car?"

  Geigi's face bore that slight pallor that an ateva could achieve. Indeed, perhaps Geigi — not involved, and fearing he might be blamed — had been about to cancel the proposed fishing trip as inappropriate under the circumstances, and to offer the use of his car for security reasons.

  He had, however, just placed the shoe on the other foot.

  Offered the man dessert, as the atevi saying went. Meaning the next dish after the fatal revelation at dinner.

  "Nand' paidhi," Geigi said with a decisive nod of his head, "I shall gladly ride with you, and be honored by your company."

  It also was, most definitely, a commitment mutually to be seen in such company: Geigi was casting his lot with the aiji in Shejidan, in case the neighbor lords of the interlaced peninsular association should think of annoying the aiji by striking at the aiji's prize piece in this province.

  Geigi walked with him down the concrete path to the car, a quiet progress of themselves and their respective security personnel. "Do," Bren said, almost embarrassed to say, "look to nand' Borujiri's safety as well, Tano-ji."

  "We have passed that advice to building security," Tano said as they approached the cars, the centermost of which was his, with others close about it. Tano would in no wise leave him. And somehow Tano had advised building security indeed, probably through Geigi's security, Gesirimu, while he was signing cards, without him ever noticing. That was how they'd forestalled the news services getting to the outside door.

  "Distressing," lord Geigi said. "I assure the paidhi that no event will threaten his safety. I should be greatly embarrassed if such were the case."

  "I would never wish," he said to lord Geigi, "to put my host at risk, and please, lord Geigi, never underestimate the value you represent to the aiji. I know that Tabini-aiji would take strong measures in any action against you or yours."

  It was courtly. It was also true. Geigi was getting that ship built. Geigi was the source of stability and employment in the region.

  Then as they came close to the road, well-wishers watching from the plant spied them and their company. The plant doors opened, and a crowd came pouring out toward them, waving and offering flowers, accompanied by the news services and the cameras, at which security, his and Geigi's, definitely looked askance.

  But the plant workers seemed to have no inkling that there was a security alert in operation, and atevi polite, expressionless silence during a speech didn't at all mean restraint once good will was established. There were cheers, there were bouquets tossed at the hand held rope perimeter which hastily moving plant security established. That the' flowers landed on the grass and couldn't be retrieved in no way daunted the well-wishers. The offering was enough, and atevi were used to tight security: the higher the lord, the tighter and more reactive the guard around him.

  Bren darted a few meters from the walk to the lawn, stooped and picked up a bouquet himself, as a lord of the Association couldn't possibly do, but he, the human, he of the white ribbon, he had no such reservations and no great requirement of lordly dignity. He held the bouquet of flowers aloft and waved it at the cheering crowd as Algini and Tano urged him toward the open car door.

  But the good will of the commons was his defense as well, and taking such gambles was in some measure his job. The crowd was delighted with his gesture. They shouted and waved the more. It satisfied the news services, who had a good clip of more than people walking to the cars.

  Defending him from the consequences of such gestures was of course Tano's and Algini's job, and as he and lord Geigi entered the car from opposite sides,
Tano entered to assume his back-facing seat in the capacious rear of the car and Algini took the front seat by the driver. Cars full of security staff preceded them as they pulled out; and more cars would come behind.

  "One still extends the invitation," lord Geigi said. "I know that fish is laughing at us."

  "I look forward," Bren said, "to the hunt for this fish. I hope for an invitation in the next passage of this reckless creature. I wish I might have had a try this season. I hope you will remember me in the next."

  "One indeed will. Beyond a doubt."

  Clearly Tano and Algini weren't going to relax until he was out of the province.

  But he trusted they had heard the news of the assassination before the news services had heard, unless reporters of the same news services had happened to surround lord Saigimi at the very moment of his death — and then only if they had the kind of communications the Guild had. His security had heard as fast as they had because the agency responsible (or Saigimi's guard) was electronically plugged into the Assassins' Guild, which was able to get direct messages to Guild members faster than the aiji's personal representatives, who weren't always told what was going on.

  And it was a Guild assassination, or there'd be real trouble. The Guild was a fair broker and a peacekeeper. It might authorize a contract for an assassination to be carried out by one member but it didn't withdraw resources from other members in good standing who might be defending the intended target. It most severely frowned upon collateral damage — biichi'ji, finesse, was a point of pride of the Guild in authorizing and legally notifying targets as well as in carrying out contracts — and the Assassins' Guild did pass warnings where warnings were due in order to prevent such damage.

  So, of course, did Tabini-aiji pass warnings of his own intent to his own security, who might not be informed by their Guild — even the aiji filed Intent, as he had seen once upon a time. But lords and lunatics, as Tano had once said, didn't always file, and defense didn't always know in advance. If Tabini had taken lord Saigimi down, Tano and Algini might possibly know it from Tabini's sources.

  Unless it was Geigi who had done it. He was very conscious of the rather plump and pleasant ateva weighing down the seat cushion beside him, in this car that held the pleasant musky scent of atevi, the size and mass of atevi. It would certainly make sense. Geigi was not the complacent man he'd seemed, and Geigi had shifted loyalties last year away from lord Saigimi's plots against the aiji.

  It made thorough sense that Geigi, with his new resources, had placed Guild members as near Saigimi as he could get them; it was an easy bet that Saigimi had done exactly the same thing in lord Geigi's district.

  So there was very good reason, in the direct involvement of lord Geigi with past events, for the paidhi's security to be very anxious about that gesture of stop ping and picking up the flowers. Sometimes, Bren thought, he had an amazing self-destructive streak.

  Geigi leaving his own security to other cars, to sit beside him surrounded by Tabini's agents, was a declaration of strong reliance on the paidhi and on the aiji in Shejidan; but it also tainted the paidhi and the aiji with collusion if Geigi had done it.

  Damn. Surely not. Tabini knew where he was and what was going on. Tabini's security wouldn't let him make that mistake.

  Meanwhile all those reporters who had gathered to cover the plant tour were back there to report his inviting lord Geigi under his protection the length and breadth of the peninsula, not to mention reporting the gesture to all the lords of the Association.

  Among them, in the Padi Valley to north, was the lady Direiso of the Kadigidi house, who truly did wish the paidhi dead, and who was alive herself only because the power vacuum her death would create could be more troublesome to the aiji than her living presence.

  Direiso. That was an interesting question.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 3

  « ^ »

  The cars of the escort passed like toys under the right-hand wing as the private jet made the turn toward home. A bright clot of flowers, more bouquets and wreaths, showed on the concrete where the plane had stood. Now they surrounded a cluster of black car roofs.

  So lord Geigi hadn't driven off once the plane's doors had closed, nor even during the long wait while the plane had taxied far across to the east-west runway. Geigi had waited to see it in the air.

  Even now, a small number of atevi were standing beside the cars, watching the plane, extravagant gesture from a lord of the Association, in a politics in which all such gestures had meaning.

  No word for love in the Ragi language, and no word for friend, even a friend of casual sort. Among the operational ironies of the language, or the atevi mind, it rendered it very hard for an ateva in lord Geigi's situation to make his personal position clear, once there were logical reasons to suspect his associations — because associations colored everything, demanded everything, slanted everything.

  Bren found himself quite — humanly speaking — touched by the display now vanishing below his window, not doubting the plant workers and the common people of the white-plaster township that came up in his view. They were the offerers of those flowers.

  But from this perspective of altitude and distance, he was no longer blindly trusting.

  Not even of lord Geigi, except as Geigi's known and unknown associations currently tended toward the same political focus as his own: toward Tabini, aiji of the Western Association, Tabini, who owned this plane, and the security, and the loyalties of lords and commons all across the continent.

  Man'chi. Instinctual, not consciously chosen, loyalty. Identical man'chi made allies. There was no other meaningful reckoning.

  You couldn't say that human word 'border,' either, to limit off the land passing under them. An atevi map didn't really have boundaries. It had land ownership — sort of. It had townships, but their edges were fuzzy. You said 'province,' and that was close to lines on a map, and it definitely had a geographical context, but it didn't mean what you thought it did if you were a hard-headed human official trying to force mainland terms into Mospheiran boxes. So whatever he had experienced down there, it didn't have edges, as the land didn't have edges, as overlapping associations didn't have edges.

  A thought like that could, if analyzed, give one solitary human a lonely longing for something he touched to mean something human and ordinary and touch him back, and for something to satisfy the stirrings of affection that good actions made in a human heart.

  But if something did, was it real? Was affection real because one side of the transaction felt it, if the other side in responding always felt something different?

  The sound of one hand clapping. Was that what he heard?

  The plane leveled out to pursue its course to the northeast. Outside the window now were the hills of the southern peninsula, Talidi Province, a geographical distinction, again without firm edges. Beyond that hazy range of hills to the south sat the Marid Tasigin, the coastal communities where lord Saigimi had had greatest influence, which would be in turmoil just now as the word of their lord's assassination spread.

  Out the other window, across the working space on this modest-sized executive jet, he saw only blue sky. He knew what he would see if he got up and took a look: the same shining, wave-wrinkled sea he had seen from Geigi's balcony, and the same haze on the horizon that was the southern shore of Mospheira.

  He didn't want to get up and look in that direction this afternoon. He'd done too much looking and too much thinking this morning, until, without even thinking about it, he'd rubbed raw a small spot in his sensibilities that he'd thought was effectively numb.

  Thinking about it, like a fool, he began to think about Barb, and his mother and his brother, and wondered what the weather was like and whether his brother, ignoring the death threats for an hour or two, was tinkering with his boat again, the way he did on spring evenings.

  That part of his life he just had to seal off. Let it alone, quit scratching the scab. He'd just come too close to Mos
pheira this leg of the trip, had it too visible to him out the plane window, had sat there on that balcony with too much time to think.

  The other part, his job, his duty, whatever he wanted to call it —

  Well, at least that was going far better than he'd hoped.

  Every cheering success like that in the town and factory dropping away in jet-spanned distance behind them was another direct challenge to contrary atevi powers only uneasily restrained within the Association: if they didn't get rid of Tabini fast, the dullest of them could see that the change they were fighting was going to become a fact of atevi life so deeply rooted in the economy it would survive Tabini. Life, even if Tabini died this minute, would never be what it would have been had Tabini never lived.

  Numerous lords among the atevi were hostile to human cultural influence — hell, one could about say every lord of the Association including Tabini himself had misgivings about human culture, although even Tabini was weakening on the issue of television and lengthening the hours the stations were permitted to transmit, a relaxation the paidhi had begun to worry about.

  Other lords and representatives were amenable to human technology as far as it benefited their districts but hostile to Tabini as an overlord for historic and ethnic reasons.

  And there were a handful of atevi both lordly and common who were bitterly opposed to both.

  In all, it was an uneasy pedestal for a government that had generally kept its equilibrium only by Tabini's skill at balancing threat and reward. Geigi was a good instance: Geigi had very possibly started in the camp of the lords hostile to Tabini for reasons that had nothing to do with technology and everything to do with ethnic divisions among atevi.

  But when Geigi had gotten himself in over his head, financially, politically, and by association, Tabini had not only refrained from removing him or humiliating him, Tabini had acknowledged that the peninsula had been on the short end of government appointments and contracts for some time (no accident, counting the presence of Tabini's bitterest enemies in control of the peninsula) and agreed that Geigi, honest, honorable lord Geigi, was justified in his complaints.