It was the best time he had had in days. They broke already-broken pots, and chased pot-chips across the garden flagstones. The Edi workmen who were repairing the portico began to lay bets, and some of the servants came out and watched.
He won the contest. “But I have used it longer, nandi!” he said. Great-grandmother had taught him always to salve feelings when he won.
“Pish,” Geigi said, which was Great-grandmother’s word. “You are indeed your father’s son. You have a talent for hunting. I, alas, have a talent simply for consuming good dinners aftersomeone has done the hunting.”
He laughed, seeing Lord Geigi was joking with him, and maybe saying something deeper: Geigi was that kind of man. This is a very, very smart man, he thought to himself, and then: Geigi sits and watches and just collects power when people give it to him. Besides my father and my great-grandmother and nand’ Bren, this is the most powerful man there is. And people want to give it to him, because Geigi has no ambitions for his own clan. He is disconnected from the Maschi.
The Maschi clan lord is a fool. Geigi does not want to be clan lord.
The grownups talked about the Maschi and the Marid, and how Geigi had a Marid wife until he got the idea she was plotting against him. And he made a fast move to my father’s side.
Geigi is not a stupid man. Whatever he does, puts more things in Geigi’s hands. And me being who I am, he is very glad to do me a favor. He is storing that away for when I am grown up. When Geigi does you a favor, Geigi will always be very smart how he uses it.
One has never met a man like Geigi. He is different. He moves slowly on his feet, but is way ahead in his mind. And he would put up with a lot before he would want to be the lord of the Maschi.
He runs Sarini Province. How does he do that, from orbit?
A lot of phone calls. And when the phones were all shut down during the Troubles, Sarini Province had no lord and things got in a real mess. The Marid moved right in. And the Edi stopped them. So the Marid got to Baiji.
“You are thinking, young lord,” Geigi said.
He was caught with his solemnity-face. He put a smile on it, the sociable face. And still kept his thoughts inside. He gave a polite bow. “Nand’ Bren says you are very smart, nandi. I think you are.”
He somewhat surprised Geigi. Or Geigi put that kind of face on, and gave a little nod of his own. “You flatter me, nandi.”
“You had rather not be clan lord, had you, nandi?”
That did surprise Geigi. He was fairly sure of it.
“Far from it, young lord.”
Cajeiri raised the slingshota, put a stone in it, and further pulverized a potsherd. He handed it to Geigi, who made a creditable shot himself, and handed it back.
“And you want to go back to the station, nandi,” Cajeiri said. “You like living there.”
Now it was a very sober face Geigi offered him. “The station is my domain, young lord. I have business there.”
“You really like it, however,” Cajeiri said.
A heavy sigh. And Geigi looked at him in a curious way. It was the way adults looked at adults. “The world has its pleasures,” Geigi said. “But I—quite honestly, young gentleman, I have a certain peace in my station post. A certain confidence in waking up in the morning. And a certain skill in getting atevi on the station to stop squabbling over clans and prerogatives and do their jobs in a sensible, civilized way. I derive a certain pleasure out of seeing Maschi and Edi, Taibeni and Atageini and all the rest sitting at my table and behaving themselves in a way they would notdo on the planet.”
He had seen it, in his time on the ship. He had seen it with his human associates. “Like myself, and Gene, and Artur. They are my associates, nandi! Nobody will say they should be, but they are, the same as Jegari and Antaro, who are Taibeni, and people think they belong back in Taiben, but they are myassociates, and Gene and Artur and Irene would get along with them very well. I know what you mean.”
Geigi smiled at him. “So you do, young lord, so you do.”
“One wishes one could just make everybody do that down here!”
The smile became a gentle laugh. “One does indeed. One only wishes one had fruit trees up there.”
He saw something else about Geigi. “I bet you could have one in a pot.”
Geigi laughed, and then looked thoughtful, and very thoughtful. “Young lord, that is a very interesting idea!”
He passed the slingshota to Geigi, who scored on a potsherd, before Geigi passed it back and said that probably they had defied the precautions too long as was, and that they should go back in so his bodyguard could get down off the roof.
So they did.
He understood a lot more about Geigi, then. He had things to think about when they went back inside and Geigi went back to his work.
One of the first things he thought was that, within his aishid, two would understand perfectly everything he and Geigi had said; and two, who had come out at the last to stand and look worried about it all, would be completely appalled.
He was less bored now. But no less frustrated with what he had. He had a crystal-clear idea of the way his own aishid could work—that one-table idea Geigi had talked about. The thing that did not work on the planet.
Except that Geigi and Lord Bren and Great-grandmother were doing something of the like, inviting the Edi in, so maybe it was not a stupid idea for the world.
The boy had been exemplary for days. The worst he had done lately was entice sensible Lord Geigi to violate security precautions. The whole house had stood to attention while Lord Geigi and Cajeiri had destroyed pottery in the garden; but with security all about, on the roof, on the wall, and about the premises—at least it had let young Cajeiri—and their visitor from space—blow off a little steam.
Toby and Barb had taken their own little turn at freedom, coming upstairs to the sitting room, which was, if only psychologically, far more comfortable than the basement. They had procured a deck of Mospheiran-style playing cards, so staff reported, and were pleasantly engaged.
The dowager was doing a little reading, after a spate of phone calls and coded requests. Her staff was resting.
The paidhi’s bodyguard was resting again, too, since the two escapees to the garden were safely back inside—while the paidhi was still sifting through names, names, names and whereabouts and histories and genealogies and business arrangementsc and reading through the first pages of Baiji’s sorry account of the last few years. Baiji’s writing—God! Every line was I, I-this, I-that, and I-thought and I-felt, and damned little information. There were asides, in which Baiji described, to his own credit, one was sure he thought, that he had planted fruit trees in the back of the orchard. That he had enlarged the dining patio. That he had built a new stairs on the dockside. He had built an elaborate gazebo in his mother’s memory. He seemed bound to list all his credits, never mind the information they were really after.
The account finally got to a visit from a representative of a trade office from Separti Township, and the proposal, convolutely related, for a further meeting.
Thathad been the foot in the door. The trade organization in question had Marid ties. They had talked finance—clear that Baiji had a very weak grasp of that subject—and cited references from various south coast companies, which Baiji claimed not to remember, except for one vintner. God! Hardly a nest of espionage there. But there was, buried deep within the account, mostly implied, the notion that Baiji had been scared the world was ending when Tabini had been replaced by Murini, and had been very relieved to receive this contact with people who represented money.