Cajeiri scrambled up and chased down the corridor after his car, where it had swerved and stalled against the inner wall.
“May one go ask Gin-aiji’s staff, nandi, about the wheels?”
Oh, now one knew why the aiji-to-be raced his car past authority’s door.
“If Cenedi agrees.” One suspected Cenedi had just said no to the young wretch. And that diversion was in order. “My breakfast is likely waiting… a simple one, aiji-meni.” One never, except through staff, invited a person of higher status to share a meal. One could, however, suggest that breakfast was available at a whim. “I’m sure Bindanda could manage another place.”
“I already had breakfast,” Cajeiri said. And confessed the ultimate catastrophe. “And I’m bored , Bren-nandi.”
“Well, there you have the dreadful truth about adventures, aiji-meni. A great deal of adventures is being bored, or scared, or cold, or wet, or not having breakfast or information on schedule. But adventures often improve in the telling.”
Cajeiri belatedly saw he was being joked with. And took it with an expression very much his father’s when things didn’t go well—not angry, more bewildered at the universe’s temerity in trifling with his wishes. And next came, unmistakably, great-grandmother’s tone.
“Well, I detest boredom, Bren-nandi. I detest it. I brought my own player, and I want tapes, and nadi Cenedi says I have to have your permission to have them.”
“That’s because it’s the human Archive, nandi-meni, and what’s human is very different, and some of it confuses even humans who aren’t ten yet.”
“I know. But I’m very intelligent.”
“Well, one supposes one could go back to the computer and find something. If the young aiji were interested, he might watch.” One didn’t ask an aiji under one’s roof, either. One suggested there might be something of interest under that roof and the great lord went, if he wished.
Cajeiri wished. He all but tumbled over himself in longing to be somewhere new and entertaining, in a generally off-limits cabin where he hadn’t yet put a dent in something or scratched something or met local disapproval.
So, well, with Bindanda’s forgiveness and given the staff’s devious ways of knowing where he was, the lord of the province of the heavens decided breakfast could wait a few moments.
“The nearest chair is comfortable,” Bren said, sitting down at his desk, and opening up his computer. “Tapes, tapes, tapes.”
“Cenedi doesn’t have to know,” the young rascal suggested. “I want the war ones.”
“Oh, but Cenedi is extremely good at finding out, aiji-meni, and I am Bren-nandi , and dare I say that the young aiji’s latest statement held an unfortunate two?”
“Bren-nandi.” Cajeiri was occasionally experimenting in the adult language. “And it was not two, Bren-nandi.”
“Mode of offer, young aiji, was the implied infelicity of two, since though I trust you were speaking regarding my action, you nevertheless omitted my courtesy.” He could be quite coldly didactic when his fingers were on his keyboard. But one didn’t dwell on an aiji’s failures. He called a list of film titles to his display. “Ha.”
And sifted them for classics as Cajeiri leaned forward, looking… as if Cajeiri could even read the list.
“Ahh,” Bren said as enigmatically as possible.
“Where?” Cajeiri asked sharply, and immediately, under threat of no tapes, remembered the courtesy form: “What does one find in this list, nandi?”
Another sort through the list. Children’s classics. One owed the aiji a proper response for his newly-discovered courtesy. “The very best of stories, aiji-meni.” He considered Tom Sawyer and Connecticut Yankee —no, problematic in approach to authority. And one had no wish to see Cajeiri discover practical jokes or paintbrushes. Robin Hood … no, not good: not only defying authority, but promoting theft.
“Ha.” The Three Musketeers . Satisfying to most atevi principles: the support of an aiji’s wife by loyal security personnel, the downfall of base conspirators.
The education of a young man with more ideas than experience.
He copied it and gave the lad the disk. “Your player will handle this, aiji-meni. One believes the piece is even in color. One is advised to set the switch to second position.”
“Thank you, Bren-nandi!”
“A pleasure, young aiji.” God, he’d forgotten the story himself. And remembered it, once his mind was on it. The whole notion of youthful derring-do came like a transfusion. Oxygen to the blood.
Dared he even think age came on with a little stiffening of the backbone, a little too much propriety, a few too many situations that numbed the nerves?
“Perhaps it would suit the young aiji for me to examine that racing car, after all,” he said. “After breakfast, that is, which the young aiji might still attend.”
Cajeiri happily changed his mind.
And handed the car to him under the table, in a hiatus of service. He had a look at the wheels. And in lieu of a consultation of Gin’s engineers, he proposed an after-breakfast investigation of available possibilities, which ended up providing bits of plastic tubing to stand the wobbly wheels off from the sides.
Which was how, in this transit between places in the depths of space, the dowager’s security happened to find the lord of the heavens down on his knees at one end of the corridor with the future aiji similarly posed down by the galley.
And that was how the dowager’s security ended up, with Banichi and Jago, designing a remote-controlled car whose wheels did not wobble. One understood there were secret bets with Gin’s staff. And a proposed race date.
The staff’s new passion became Alexandre Dumas, books and tapes alike, even the dowager requesting a copy, via written message. Bren began reading the works himself, amid the growing tendrils of Sandra Johnson’s plants, which now formed a green and white curtain from their hanging baskets, and writing daily to his brother.
Banichi and Jago have a chess match going , was one entry. The staff is laying bets .
And at the resolution: Jago is trying not to be pleased with herself; Banichi is trying not to notice. They’ve started another game .
I think there was a car race. And I don’t think we won. I haven’t heard a thing, but Banichi is building a small remote control device of his own, and bets on that are secret, but not that secret.
Jase turned up at one lunch, Jase’s midnight snack, and for an hour they sat and discussed nothing in particular—the merits of cork fishing and the currents off Mospheira’s south shore—whether or not Crescent Island development had ever taken off and whether a small yacht dared try the southern sea.
No, the log records had not surfaced, Sabin was growing peevish, and he had found no key to the information.
Damn.
had lunch with Jase. We talked about Beaufort Bay. We’ll have to talk about the exact plans when I get home. That’s how crazy we’ve become.
God, Toby, I want to get home. I want to get home — and it comes to me that it’s not just the chance of waking up somewhere we didn’t ever mean to go that scares me spitless. It’s that I want to get home , I, me, the me that’s going to have a home when I get back. I changed when I went to the mainland, but not so that I didn’t recognize home. I changed when I began to live on the mainland, but not so that I didn’t dream of trips to the north shore. I changed when I went to live in space, and the situation was always hot, and getting back to the island meant running a gauntlet of press and politics that just wouldn’t let me alone. It’s so strange out here — not that we’ve seen anything or done anything but sit in our cabins for a year and read Dumas and race toy cars — but it’s still strange; and it can only get stranger, and I think so much of home. I’m a little desperate today. I wish I had answers I don’t have .