Tano took up a post outside the door when he followed Jase inside and shut the door.
“So what is it?” Bren said.
“Just—” Jase lapsed into his own dialect. “Dammit, you could have phoned, that’s all.”
“For what?”
“It doesn’t matter! I waited. I waited every evening. I couldn’t even get the damn security to say what city you were in!”
Tano and Algini outranked the security he’d left guarding Jase, that was why. But it was petty business. Notthe real issue. Jase began arguments by diversion—he’d learned that, and all right, Bren thought, he could chase diversion, if that was where Jase wanted to take this conversation at the moment; and they’d pretend to talk, and pretend to reach a conclusion and have the real issue for dessert.
In the meanwhile, and inRagi:
“Security is security is security, Jasi-ji. They’re not an information service. Don’t swear about them. They doknow that word.—And I’m sorry. I couldn’t phone and, frankly, risk what you’d say without your knowing you were compromising my security. I’m sorry. I warned you I’d be impossible to reach. I called you four days ago—”
“For ‘Hello, I’m fine, how are you?’ Thanks!”
“I told you I wouldn’t have a secure phone and I didn’t. This afternoon, with the situation what it was, radio traffic had to be at a minimum. Whatthe hell are we arguing about?—Is something wrong?”
Words didn’t come easily in moments of fracture, and the paidhi-aiji knew, hell, yes, he knew, he’d expected it. Jase was close to nonverbal at the moment, too frustrated to find a word in Ragi or otherwise—and he himself, years of study, he’d been through it, too, the moments of sheer disorientation across the cultural interface. Jase’s ship didn’t remotely comprehend what they’d sent Jase into, without the years of training, without the killer selection process in a University that weeded out candidates with any faults in self-control, and Jase had made heroic efforts at holding back his temper—so much so that atevi had begun to realize they had two very different personalities under this roof and occasionally to observe the fact.
Jasi-ji, madam Saidin had put it to him, is rather more excitable, is he not, nand’ paidhi? Is this a correct observation? Or have we offended him?
By no means is it your fault: he’d said that to Saidin in early winter.
Consequently it was hisjob to cover for Jase’s failures in composure now in spite of the fact that he himself was too tired to reason. Atevi outside the staff weren’t going to understand Jase’s difficulties, and wouldn’t, and didn’t quite give a damn.
He gave it a few seconds while he watched Jase fight for composure, careful breaths, a deep, difficult calm. Improving, he said to himself, while his own blood pressure, even with evidence of that improvement, exceeded his recent altitude.
“Bad day,” Jase said finally, and then, having won his approval, had to add, “I can see you’re not in the mood to discuss it.”
“I’ll discuss it.” He hatedhimself when he agreed to suffer.
“We have cook waiting. I don’t want to stand between you and supper.”
“Control your temper, nadi.” Jase had spoken in Ragi. Bren changed languages. Fast. While he had his temper in both hands. The atevi language reminded him of calm. It exertedcalm, force of habit. “ Face.”
There was a scowl on Jase’s face at the moment. It vanished. Jase became perfectly calm.
“Is there a danger?” Bren felt constrained to ask, now that reason was with them both. “Is there something I can imminently do something about? Or answer? Or help?”
Jase had been locked in this apartment for six months trying to learn the language, and there’d been moments of frustration at which the monolingual staff, without the experience Jase was going through, could only stare in confusion. There were moments lately when not only the right word wouldn’t come, noword would come, in any language. There were moments when, helpless as an infant’s brain, the adult mind lost all organization of images and association of words simultaneously, and the mental process became less than three years of age. Deep fluency started by spurts and moments.
Jase seemed, this day, this hour, to have reached saturation point definitively and universally.
“I’m back for a while,” Bren said gently, and, which one didn’t do with atevi, patted Jase’s shoulder. “I understand. We’ll talk.”
“Yes,” Jase said, in Ragi, and seemed calmer. “Let’s go to dinner.”
5
Jase sat at one end of the small formal table and Bren sat at the other as the staff served a five course supper with strict adherence to the forms. The staff might easily have kept less formality with the paidhi nowadays, though he was generally careful of proprieties, but he wanted Jase to learnthe formal and correct set of manners, the correct utensil, the correct grip, the correct posture, the correct communication with the server: he had left orders, and the staff had mercilessly followed them, even today, when he would as gladly have omitted them.
Jase was in effect a child, as far as communication went, and in some regards as far as expectations of the planet went. Bren had said that to Saidin, too, and she perhaps put Jase’s fits of temper in that basket along with her observation and with his recent declaration that the staff were all rain clouds— ghidari’sai uchl’sa-ma—when Jase had wished to tell Saidin he’d possibly offended members of the staff— jidari’sai uchi’sa-ma.
Rain clouds had instantly become the running joke in the household the day before Bren had left. The staff had been accustomed to believe Jase couldn’t understand.
And before he’d left he’d had delicately to explain to Saidin that, yes, Jasi-ji did understand the joke; and yes, Jasi-ji had been embarrassed, and, no, Jasi-ji would not pursue the matter of the staff’s laughter to anyone’s detriment, so they need not worry, but it was time not to laugh any longer.
Possibly that was what had blown up while he was gone. Jase might be a child in size to the atevi, and might use the children’s language, which didn’t have the rigid expectation of correct numbers, but Jase was nota child, and Jase had been on edge since before he left on the trip.
The staff brought in the third round of trays and served the seasonal game.
“I’ve been battling the irregular verbs,” Jase said conversationally. “The staff has been very helpful. No more rain clouds. Get. I’ve been working on get. Indivisible plurals.”
“Common verb. Defective verb?”
“Defective verb?”
“Old verb. Lot of use. They break.”
Jase gave him an odd look.
“True,” Bren said. “The common verbs wear out. They lose pieces over the centuries. People patch them. People abuse them. Everyone uses get.” It was only half facetious, and having led Jase on a small chase that tested his command of unusual forms, he thought it time for explanation: “If only professors use a verb, it remains unchanged forever. Fossils. Getisn’t such a verb. It’s been used by the common man.”
“It’s a difficult verb.”
“It certainly is. But your accent’s vastly improved. Very good.—Listen: master getand you’ve got the irregular indivisibles of shikira, makkiura, and shis’urna. Any three quarters of any verb in the -ireiclass: they rhyme with the -raplurals, at least in the past tenses.”