Bren found his eyelids at half mast, apologized, and Jase excused himself: “You’d better get to bed,” Jase said. The rigors of travel were, curiously, another matter ship-folk had to learn about, and most didn’t quite understand: the notion of packing one’s belongings in a suitcase and rushing breakneck from point to point was something Jase had only experienced on a planet.
“Good of you to come,” Bren said, saw Jase to the door himself, and added, because he meant it, “Very good of you to come. Do it again soon.”
Fact was, he missed Jase. Didn’t know how he would manage if Jase ever moved back in, since the affair with Jago had gone beyond affair, and gotten to be the next thing to married routine. But there were times a human argument, a human conversation massaged areas of his brain that felt far too little exercised… that was what it was, he thought: too little stimulation of the human that was left in him. Not good. Not at all good, for the human organism. He didn’t know, before Ginny on the shuttle today, how long it had been since he’d had a lengthy social conversation with another human being.
Immediately after that, the brandy hit him with full force, persuading him that bed was just about the last objective he could reasonably achieve. Sensibly, he wantedto talk to Banichi and Jago tonight about a number of things, and dutifully, he should have advised his staff and settled down for an all-night debrief. Jago waited for him in the security post, still official and still in uniform, well, down to the tee-shirt, at least—but debriefing wasn’t what she’d been led to expect tonight. Sleepwas reasonably what she thought she had coming, and she, who’d been on outside duty for hours, took precedence over Tano and Algini who’d had only on-site duty, off and on.
He wasn’t in condition to confer with anyone, as it was. The Jase conversation had been the last. Even without the brandy he suspected he would have opted for bed, being just too dog-tired.
But there was more than that business afoot, more than Jase, more than Ramirez, more than Tabini’s dealings with the provinces.
“Is there any word from my brother?”
“No, nadi-ji. Go to bed.”
“Good idea.” Tonight he just wanted to fall over and be unconscious for a few hours. “I’m going to sleep, Jago-ji. Are you coming to bed?”
“Soon,” Jago said, and added, because she knew how curiosity consumed him, drove him, made him crazy: “Banichi likewise says get some sleep.”
At least they didn’t need him. Some things, if they rested in safe hands, he didn’t have to ask. He simply directed himself back to the bedroom, shed his clothes into a servant’s care, all but fell onto the mattress and pulled up the covers. His body temperature was sinking fast.
But he didn’t sleep. He shut his eyes, wondering where Toby was, in what situation, whether there would be a phone call before morning.
After half an hour he got up, went to the computer and keyed in a message. Toby, I got your letter. I’m concerned. Call.
He sent it. It had to pass through the security station out there. His staff would know, and probably be distressed about it. But he didn’t explain. He went back to bed, no easier in his mind.
Jago eventually came to bed, a considerable weight on the other side of the mattress, interrupting an exhausted haze that was not quite restful sleep. He knew she was there, and dropped back off, safe.
Safe. Companioned. All things local in their places.
He couldn’t oversee the others.
Chapter 6
No phone call in the morning. Perhaps, Bren said to himself, amid breakfast, the health crisis was over and Toby was on a flight back to the coast. If Toby could possibly reach a phone, he’d likely call, and if he couldn’t reach a phone, it likely meant he was traveling—which was as good news as a phone call.
In the meantime, morning courtesies included a hike all the way to the Construction Operations office to meet officially with their nextdoor neighbor, Lord Geigi—electric runabouts were available for the trip, but undignified, in Bren’s island-born view of the universe—besides heartily cursed by walkers in the halls. Bren, for his part, preferred walking, for the exercise, if nothing else: he’d watched certain officebound sorts put on the pounds, and fought the tendency.
Besides, in long stretches of hall where Jase swore on his life there were no bugs, he could talk at leisure with his staff, much as he and Banichi would talk in the open country down on the planet.
“So how has the world taken the aiji’s address, by now?”
“In curiosity,” Banichi said. “In great interest. Great interest and an expression of discontent in the East.”
Hardly surprising.
“Any clues why he wanted me?”
Tabini, and the ringing of that bell that held every imagination entranced, entrapped.
“One is not satisfied,” Banichi said. “We’ve reviewed the tape. But we haven’t discovered the absolute answer, Bren-ji. We have not, not in the configuration, the seating, or in anything said during the ceremony. Legislative proceedings are under seal, down in Shejidan. And thatis troubling.”
“Something is very peculiar, nadi-ji.”
They were coming into a more trafficked area now, beyond the limits of any secure conversation. Remarkable sight, atevi and humans in about equal numbers, coming and going on business, atevi and humans in office clothes and workman’s clothes—regulations-wise unable to say more than a handful of words to one another—notably please go, please come, please stop… please call the supervisor immediately, in the most meticulously memorized and numerically neutral courtesy. But by that means the common folk of two species did talk, if only in those approved, memorized phrases for known situations.
They tried to be careful. But at certain points they had to cooperate.
And sometimes it came down to things ludicrous on the surface—at least to one side of the question—but fraught with the most serious emotional reactions.
Fish, for instance, and the urgent reason he had to talk to Geigi about robots and a fish tank.
They reached the construction office, a reception area inside of course tastefully arranged: small scroll-paintings and a reception table, with a bowl for correspondence—and an inexpensive soft drink dispenser for human visitors. Geigi was nothing if not even-handed, though the split in decor made an atevi visitor look twice.
They were expected. The attendant rose and bowed, and immediately opened the door with a key push.
“Nandi.” Security on duty just inside was as easy, as cordiaclass="underline" Tano had called ahead.
And in this easy place, Bren left Banichi at the security station to take his ease with Geigi’s staff, there to have a soft drink, likely, and exchange information.
Meanwhile he went on into the inner chamber, where Geigi, in informal clothing this morning, presided over a desk well-littered with papers, beside a tank humming and bubbling and populated with color and darting movement.
“Bren-ji.” Geigi rose—great courtesy, for a lord in his own territory. He was a jovial man whose whole attitude toward life was experimental—and, for an atevi lord, very spur-of-the-moment. He swept business aside, knocking two storage disks onto the carpet in the process, and personally dragged a chair up to the side of his desk. “Tea—tea, will you, Bren-ji? I swear I could do with a cup. We have this most amazing infuser—” Geigi himself went to a domed creation on the bookcase counter, put a plastic cup beneath, and created a cup of tea.