"I am willing to translate atevi voices to the ship, in order to see to it that whatever the ship wants or whatever the Mospheiran President or Mospheiran factions of whatever nature may do, the ship will not be conducting business in the same ignorance that led to the War of the Landing."
"I do know humans, nadiin, from the inside. I can assure you as I know the sun will rise tomorrow, that the ship crew won't be nearly as naive about Mospheira's humans as they may be about atevi. It's going to be very hard for any Mospheiran faction to persuade the ship that they're without ulterior motives, and very hard for any faction on Mospheira to persuade the ship to any course, not alone because the ship will suspect factionalism, but because the ship itself may have internal factions whose siding with one faction or the other on Mospheira may absolutely paralyze decision and produce new sub-associations with the potential for truly dangerous compromises."
"For that reason I foresee that the human government on Mospheira will respond to evidence of division among atevi with paralytic inaction on the part of the government, frenetic activity on the part of those out of power, and no rational decision will result."
"I therefore recommend, nadiin, that atevi speak with one voice when they speak to humans on the ship and on Mospheira, that your inner divisions and debates remain strictly secret, and that you treat Mospheira and the ship as two separate entities until they themselves can speak with one voice. I recommend you claim, not demand, claim as a factan equal share in the space station… for a mere beginning."
"I recommend that you speak to the ship directly and soon. I am the paidhi the Treaty appointed to deal between Mospheira and the atevi of the Western Association. I ask the Association to appoint me paidhi also to deal with the ship. This triangular arrangement —" one was never without awareness of the all-important numbers "— places the Western Association on equal footing with Mospheira, who has already delegated spokesmen to deal with the ship."
"The ship knows it must understand Mospheira as well as atevi before it can be confident of its actions. The permutations of advantage and disadvantage in this arrangement are complex, and I am convinced that atevi can secure equal advantage for themselves, particularly by securing agreements with both the elected government of Mospheira andwith the ship's authority. Again, a trilateral stability."
"I hope for your favorable consideration of the matters I've brought before you, my lords of the Association, most honorable representatives of the provinces, aiji-ma. Thank you. I stand for questions."
There it goes, he thought, made the requisite formal bow, and suffered a shortness of breath, a sweating of the palms, and a fleeting recollection, of all things, of Barb on the ski run: Barb laughing, all that white, and the whole world stretching on forever — that time, that chance, that life —
Gone — maybe gone for good, with the moves he was making.
And he had, with that disoriented sense of what now? and where now? a consuming fear that he hadn't been entirely dispassionate in his judgment, when he most, God help him, needed to be.
Slowly, in the way of atevi listeners, a murmur of comment had begun, then:
"Nand' paidhi." It was a distinguished member of the tashrid, rising to question, in the custom of the chambers. "Has your President assigned you this action against human interests in some sense of numeric balances?"
An intercultural minefield. Had the human government found inharmonious numbers for the whole situation or did it wish to create them for atevi? And the gentleman of the tashrid damn well knew humans didn't count numbers: he was playing to rural atevi paranoia and he was playing straight to the television.
So could he.
"Lord Aidin, I by no means see Mospheiran and atevi best interests as conflicting. Consider, too, my government returned me, in a crisis and under medical circumstances which clearly justified my staying on Mospheira for weeks — cooperating because Tabini-aiji requested my return. They know that if there weren't a paidhi, or if the aiji should break off relations with the paidhi-successor, as the aiji has done, no communication at all would be possible between atevi and humans. Had Mospheira wished to hold me hostage and cut off communication they might have done so. My return, literally rushing me from surgery to the airport, signals a very strong human desire to maintain communication with the mainland and their firm acknowledgment that the aiji is the ruler of the Western Association."
Lord Aidin sat down, having planted what he'd chosen to plant, all the same, for minds set on number conspiracies, damn him; but he'd gotten his own little drama in front of the cameras, too.
Then, in the evenhanded alternation of questions, a member of the hasdrawad rose, a woman he didn't know, with an abrupt: "Then who, nadi, sent Hanks-paidhi?"
Nadi, to an official speaker on the platform, was not fully respectful, and it roused a rare stir in the chambers — a sharp look from Tabini.
He answered, nonetheless, to an ateva who might have either been offended by Hanks, or leaned to Hanks as a source and now found herself embarrassed in Hanks' lack of authority:
"By the Treaty, nadi, there is only one paidhi. And, nadi, nadiin, Hanks is my successor-designate, doubtless confused by the rapidity of events. She should have received a recall order, but events have moved perhaps faster than ordinary lines of communication. She has as yet received no such orders, and feels it incumbent on her to stay until she does. I've requested of the aiji to allow her presence temporarily. If you have doubt of the delivery of your messages to the paidhi during this transition, please don't hesitate to resend. No slight is intended, nadi."
So, so quietly posed. It was really the most byzantine atevi warning he'd ever managed to deliver, and he was quite satisfied with his performance — injecting into the atevi consciousness at basement level an insight into human decision-making, and not just the hasdrawad and the tashrid, thanks to the television cameras. He had had the option, being only human, of ducking the after-address questions ordinary for an atevi speaker; but he saw those cameras, and daunting as they'd been at the outset, he'd managed, sure in his own mind it was useful for atevi out in the provinces to see the paidhi and get a sense of his face, his reactions, his nature.
"Nand' paidhi." It was a conservative member of the tashrid, rising to speak in turn. "What do youbelieve the ship is doing up there?"
Old, old, lord Madinais, blunt, and very common-man in his approaches. A respected grandfather, he always thought of the man; but that misapprehended the real power Madinais had, through seniority in a network of sub-associations many of which werecommon-man, broad-based and powerful.
"Lord Madinais, I can only conjecture: I think the ship broke down again. I think they've managed to fix it, get it running, and get back to what they hoped would be a thriving human community. It is thriving — but it's certainly complicated their position."
Dissident interests, not far from lord Madinais, had tried to kill Bren last week. But there was nothing personal in it.
"What about the trade rules?" a member of the hasdrawad shouted out. "What about the negotiations?"
"I don't think there'll be any progress in the trade talks until this ship question is settled, quite frankly, nadi. Although —"
Behind the glare of television lights someone else was on his feet, in the hasdrawad, and that wasn't by the rules.
Nerves twitched, hesitated at alarm — Fall down, his information told him; but, Possibly mistaken, his fore-brain was saying.