He just didn’t know what he was going to meet when the legislature met. The last session had seen gunfire in the chambers, blood spilled in the aisle—that memory haunted his worst nights. In the upcoming session, the bloodshed might be figurative, but no less dangerous: undefined new associations trying to form, alliances being made, power-brokering from end to end of the continent, in whole new configurations that had never existed before, never tested themselves against the others.
Everything was undefined with these new representatives coming to the session in Shejidan, people who had come to their posts after the upheaval. The remnant of the old legislature, those canny enough, devious enough, or stupidenough not to have had an opinion during the Troubles, were going to meet that tide of “new men” in a month, in the aisles of the hasdrawad and the tashrid. God knew what the flotsam would be on the beaches of those debates, or whether the paidhi’s influence could moderate a rush to give Tabini exactlywhat Tabini had always campaigned to have: more and more of the human tech that conferred power, medical advances, comforts, conveniences—and the damned wireless phones.
Too much too fast ran the risk of shipwrecking thousands of years of atevi culturec worse, yet, of running up against that great unknown of social dynamic. Wireless phones in particular made changes in the way people made contact. Easy and informal contact imitated the way humans interacted—humans, who had the word loveand friend;and had alliances outside their kinships. And atevi, who had the word association, and who felt the pull of emotions that held clans together—atevi little comprehended the changes it would make if communications started going outside their ordinary channels and if information started flowing between individuals who had no proper power to resolve an issue.
Man’chi was an emotion that to this day the paidhi could neither feel nor grasp, not even in the two nearest and dearest associatesof his, who sat on the same bench with him. They couldn’t feel what he felt; he couldn’t feel what passion beat in their hearts, and that was just the way it wasc all unknown, all fragile, all foreign, all the timec but it was what kept the clans together. Banichi and Jago would lay down their lives for him, a concept which, were he to do it for them, would mortally offend their sense of the way the universe had to work, not just the emotional sense—but the basic logic and reason underlying every decision. Such an impulse on his part would be, in their estimation, completely insane.
So when it came to politics, wireless phones and pocket coms, according to Toby, it was notjust the social perniciousness of instant communication. The cell phone plague now preoccupied humans on the island of Mospheira, a plague making them walk into traffic while in conversation that preempted their awareness of their surroundings; a compulsion that suddenly rendered them incapable of ignoring a phone call in the presence of actual people they should be dealing with. It had gone overnight (from the view of someone two years out of the current) into, Toby said, its own kind of insanity.
Atevi who stood against the establishment of a wireless network argued about clan and Guild prerogatives, but even they little visualized what it would do to the social fabricc it was as basic as the decision whether to have a network of highways, or to have a network of rail. The one, with unregulated movement, would have utterly upset the associations that were the very fabric of civilization. Rail managed not to. And upset the mode of communication that preserved clan authority? Make it possible for anybody to call anybody at any time and withoutgoing through the household? Unthinkable.
The Assassins’ Guild had more grasp of the situation than anyone—the Assassins’ Guild andthe Messengers’ Guild were both on the paidhi’s side in the debate. The Trade Guild and Transport Guild both saw advantages in the proposed technology and wanted it on a limited basis, for themselves. The Academics’ Guild stood against, except that they wanted the now-limited computer network to include their research, and libraries.
Greed was not exclusively a human vicec and everybody was willing to accept damage for somebody else’s venue to benefit their own. Fortunately the Assassins’ Guild was a very, very potent Guild, and generally was listened to—out of dread, if nothing else. The paidhi held out hope that, if he could prevail, it would be thanks to the Assassins’ Guild this time; and if he didn’t—and if this one got past him—
God, the consequent damage could wipe out everything, absolutely every good thing he’d ever tried to accomplish. He could see the aishidi’tat dissolve, right when it was most necessary the world be stable.
At times, since their return from space, he asked himself if he had not already lost control of the flow of technology. He was shocked by the changes. It was as if the floodgates had already opened—as forces for and against the old regime bargained and connived for advantage. Tabini’s year-long overthrow, which he had helped end, was in one sense the last gasp of the forces that opposedthe wholesale import of human technology, but they had bartered, in a sense, with humans, and more significantly—with humans in space. The space station had sent down mobile base stations, landers. Had established communications. Had instructed Mospheira to set up the cell net. Had encouraged Mospheira to provide technology to the atevi resistance, the University doing damned little to prevent it, and the atevi saying no to nothing.
When he’d come back, he’d found himself on Tabini’s side, where he had always been, but Tabini had always stood for human contact, more and more human technology. All sorts of proposals were close to opening the floodgates for good and all, importing everything humans had, including the technology in that starship up there, which would change so, so muchc
It was still the paidhi’s job to say no when it was time to say no.
And if he couldn’t say no to this one and make it stick, maybe it was time the paidhi left the job.
Maybe a new paidhi could do better. But he didn’t know how anybody the University trained could step into the waters now—it had become a rip current, and his own understanding of where they were going had gotten less and less sure.
Maybe the very institution of the paidhi had become outmoded, and humans and atevi actually were far enough along toward unanimity they could find their own way hereafter.
But there were bitter lessons to say that was a dangerous, dangerous assumption ever to make. The paidhi’s office existed because humans and atevi had had another lengthy period of accommodation, right after humans had landed on the planet, and good things had flowed from humanity and everybody had just lovedtheir new friendsc
Or that was what humans had thought, right before atevi (as humans saw it) went berserk and launched the War of the Landing.
From the atevi point of view, humans had damned near wrecked civilization, and in fact, they nearly had.
So it wasn’t safe to start thinking everything could roll along on its own. That, at least once upon a time, had been the point of absolutely terrible danger.
He just didn’t have the vision of the future he’d used to have. It was all dark up ahead, and he couldn’t see. He’d lost touch with Mospheira: the island of Mospheira, where he’d been born, where he’d grown up, was a place where he was no longer comfortablec where the ties he had left were all official ones, political alliesc