But one had to know the numbers. And he didn’t. The ship-folk were more alien to planet-bound humans than atevi were—while ship-folk had queasily found atevi easier to deal with than they found Mospheirans. And nobody, not even Jase, understood the Pilots’ Guild—or the senior captain.
He wanted Jase to rush down to five-deck right about now with a handful of log records assuring him there was a quick, even brilliant answer to what Ramirez had agreed to with the Guild, and it was all fine, but that scenario wasn’t going to happen. By now, he understood the dowager locking herself in her cabin and refusing to come out.
Fragile, that was what he was feeling. Fragile and entirely in the dark.
Stupidity might help. The simple disinclination to ask what came next.
As it was, his mirror and his computer and his steadily lengthening letters home asked him that question, every morning and every evening of their arbitrary, diversion-filled days.
On a certain morning Bren opened his door, bound for breakfast, and a motorized car whizzed noisily past his foot, destination right, origin left.
He looked left, at the future lord of a planet on his knees, control unit in both hands, looking entirely sheepish.
“I’m testing new wheels,” Cajeiri explained, and added in frustration: “They aren’t working right. But one thinks it’s the ship moving.”
“It may well be,” Bren said numbly. “Or not.”
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.