That was the God complex they warned you about when you embarked on the program and reminded you of it anytime you grew extravagant in your proposals to the committee. They showed you the pictures of the dead and the wounded in the war and they told you that was where too much progress too fast led you, right down the fabled primrose path to the kind of damage atevi and humans could do each other now that atevi and humans had much more advanced weapons — not only because certain ideas could be dangerous, but because change had to reverberate slowly through atevi society, and that it wasn't wise to add another set of vibrations before the first set had dissipated down to harmlessness, or one risked an untoward combination of effects that humans just weren't able to foresee.
Damned sure it wasn't the moment to lose his head and start expecting things were going to work. It was his job constantly to anticipate the worst, and to expect the parachute wasn't going to open. Most of all, baji-naji, the demon in the design: never expect common sense on both sides of the strait at the same time.
He walked out of the office and toward the breakfast room, as servants, some doubtless nursing hangovers, paid rapid bows and hurried off to that communications network they had that assured him if he sat down at the table his breakfast would turn up very soon.
He opened the glass doors onto the balcony and enjoyed the cool, damp wind. He had to brief Tabini, he ought to brief Hanks, he ought to brief Mospheira if he could get a call through to the Foreign Office.
God knew — he really ought to call the presidential staff and explain to George. Take a couple of antacids and see if he could work up the stomach to talk directly to the head of staff on the phone — assuming that Mospheira let the phones work this morning, and that the FO could get him patched through.
But he had a Policy Committee meeting before noon. He had a meeting with Tabini to set up. He had an interview upcoming with network news — a request had been waiting for him with the morning tea, and he'd confirmed it: the news service had found out, one assumed, that the paidhiin were holding conferences, that there were answers, that there was, in fact, another Landing imminent. He had a flight out to the Bergid and back staring him in the face.
He ate breakfast while he ran a voice-to-written copy of the tape, one of the mind-saving as well as finger-saving pieces of software he'd cajoled the censors into allowing across the strait. The program wasn't worth using for dictation; he was far more fluent without thinking about it and the damn thing mistook phonemes with no consistency or logic whatsoever, that he could discover: it took more head work to figure out what word in Mosphei' the thing had distorted than it did to do it in the first place, but on a transcript of a considerable amount of recorded speech it was a help.
Especially if it let the paidhi have breakfast while it ran. And a little fuss with spell-check and a visual once over let him fix the truly inane conversions that had gotten past the software and send it through the second phase translation, that at least gave him a framework to render into atevi script.
Half an hour's work and he had two sets of copies: of the tape itself, for the Foreign Office, for his records, and for Hanks — With my compliments,' he sent to Deana, expecting a retaliatory note. And, while he had a line to Mospheira, with his mother's number: Drop me a line on the system. I'm worried about you.
Of the translation — a copy first to Tabini, with: Aiji-ma, I find the tone and purpose encouraging. I have undertaken to meet their descent and to find a suitable landing site such as serves for the petal sails. I wonder is the plain below Taiben suitable and reasonable, being public land? To the hasdrawad: nadiin, I present you the transcript of my first conversation with the chosen paidhi from the ship. I find him a personable and reasonable man. And to Ilisidi, with: One has reason to hope, nand' dowager.
To his own security, then, via the house security office: I am encouraged by the tone and content of my initial conversation I have had with this individual. I hope that he and his companion make a safe descent. I look forward to dealing with this gentleman.
"This seems a judgment of feeling," Tabini observed, when they had a chance, over lunch, to talk in Tabini's apartment. "Not of fact. There is no actual undertaking on their part to perform in any significant regard — and they're dealing with Mospheira. One would think they mean to bargain down to the last moment."
Right to the soft spot. Count on Tabini.
"I've tried very analytically to abstract emotion from my judgment," Bren said. "I agree that there's a hazard in my interpretation: I'm apprehensive of my own instinctive reactions to the man I talked to, aiji-ma, and I'm trying to be extraordinarily cautious at each step. I do judge that these are brave people, which makes them valuable to their captain, there's that about them: among humans, their willingness to take risk means either the risk is small, they're sensation-seeking fools — neither of which I think is the case — or they're people with an extraordinary sense of duty above self-interest."
"This man 'chi-like'duty.' To whom?"
"That's always the question, aiji-ma. They're very plain-spoken, very forthcoming with their worries about the descent, their worries about being stranded down here. They asked straightforward questions… well, you'll see when you read the transcript. We discussed landing sites. I did warn them very plainly they should land here rather than Mospheira, and that it was a matter of protocol. I hope I was convincing."
"This choice of Taiben," Tabini said. It was a private lunch, only Eidi to serve them, while Tano waited outside with Tabini's other security. The violence of the morning storms had passed and the daylight was, however gray, far stronger beyond the white gauze of the curtains. "Taiben — is an interesting idea. Among other sites with other advantages. Let's see what the ship people think important. Speed of transport — Taiben certainly has. And with public lands, there's no clearance to obtain."
"The south range is flat," Bren said. "And unwooded. It's a very dangerous thing they're attempting. I've serious doubts they understand this technology very well. There's a knack to stone axes, so I'm told, that makes it no sure thing for moderns to do."
"Why, do you think, they've no better choice?" Tabini asked. "Are these not the lords of technology? The explorers of the bounds of the universe?"
"I find it — though it's only a guess, aiji-ma — very logical that they have no means to go down into an atmosphere. Our ancestors left their home planet to build a station in space, not to land on a world. They certainly had no craft adequate when our ancestors wanted to come down here. The station folk refused to build one then: if they had, all of history would be different. And if the Pilots' Guild had been willing to fly the craft, those who did land might have built better. The landing capsules, the petal sails, were the only alternative my ancestors had, then — and it's ironic that they're all that exist now."