He found a lift, finally, and pushed the button for 1, or he thought he'd pushed that button. The car's light panel developed numbers and symbols he didn't understand and kept traveling. He knew Banichi and Jago would be angry at him for getting into a car and pushing buttons he didn't understand. But they'd looked fine when he pushed them.
He called on the emergency phone, and Jago answered, but she said she had an appointment this afternoon, would tomorrow be acceptable? And he said, he didn't know why he said, that he couldn't wait, and he was going to get off at the floor where it was going.
Which eventually did come, and let out into a gray and brown haze in which he was totally lost. He called Jago on a phone that turned up, and Jago said, sorry, she would be there tomorrow. He'd have to wait. So he kept walking, certain that sitting still here would never get him to the meeting on time. He came to the turn in the lower hallway.
And became aware that his beast was following him, and that it was the hall outside his bedroom in Malguri. He was out of sandwiches. But the beast was hunting small vermin that ran along the edges of the hallway.
It passed him, snuffling for holes in the masonry, and left him in the dark, looking toward the crack of light that came from under his own bedroom door, beckoning him out of the nightmare and into the warmth of the familiar, if he could only get there. He walked and walked, and there always seemed progress, but he couldn't reach it. The light became the cold light of dawn, and then it was possible, but he had to leave, he had something to do, and couldn't remember what it was…
Thump.
His head jerked up. He blinked, looked about him in confusion.
"We're coming in, nand' paidhi," Tano said.
He looked out the window, at dark, at the lights of Shejidan, unable for a moment to understand how he'd come here. He moved a foot and felt his document case stowed quite safely where he'd put it.
He watched the city lights, the hills and heights and the city spread out like a carpet, all done with numbers. He hadmet such a person as the emeritus and he had a case full of papers — and the lights out there were all numbers.
He drifted off again during landing and was back in that hallway, looking for admittance to what he had to do. It was unjust that no one told him how to get inside. He began to be angry, and he went looking for Tabini to tell him things were badly arranged, and the paidhi needed…
But he couldn't remember what he needed. Things were shredding apart very badly. He was just walking down a hall and the doors were very far apart.
Bump. The wheels were on the ground. He saw the field lights ripping past the window. The paidhi traveled at jet speeds. The paidhi's mind didn't.
But he'd had no time. He'd had to get home.
Blink and he was in Malguri. Blink and the plane was slowing for the turn onto the taxiway. Lights going past one another, blue and white and red.
CHAPTER 16
It was so troubling a dream he couldn't shake it, not even at the aiji-dowager's breakfast table — he sat in the open summer air, with the dawn coming up over the Bergid, applying preserves to a piece of bread and thinking about beasts and bedrooms, astronomers and city lights and mecheiti, until Disidi gave him a curious look, rapped the teacup with her knife, and inquired if he were communing with the ship.
"No," he said quickly. "Your pardon, nand' dowager."
"You're losing weight," Ilisidi said. "Eat. So nice to see you with that clumsy thing off your arm. Get your health back. Exercise. Eat."
He had a bite of the toast. Two. He was hungry this morning. And he hadhad a decent sleep. He had his wits about him, such as they ever served to fend off Ilisidi's razor intellect — even if he had spent the night walking hallways in company with a creature whose whole kind might be extinct. It was a very, very old piece of taxidermy. So he'd assumed in Malguri.
"Young man," Ilisidi said. "Come. Is it business? Or is it another question wandering the paths of intellect?"
"Nand' dowager," he said, "I was wondering last night about the staff's welfare at Malguri. Do you have word on them? Are Djinana and Maigi well?"
"Quite well," Ilisidi said.
"I'm very glad."
"I'll convey your concern to them. Have the fruit. It's quite good."
He remembered Banichi chiding him about salad courses. And Hanks' damn pregnant calendar.
"So why do you ask?" Ilisidi asked him.
"A human concern. A neurotic wish, perhaps, for one's good memories to stay undimmed by future events."
"Or further information?"
"Perhaps."
The dowager always asked more than she answered. He didn't press the matter with her, fearing to lose her interest in him.
"And Nokhada? And Babsidi?"
"Perfectly fine. Why should you ask?"
The gardened and tile-roofed interior of the Bu-javid marched away downhill from the balcony, soft-edged with first light, and there was a muttering of thunder, though the sky was clear as far as the Bergid: it presaged clouds in the west, hidden by the roofs.
He hadn't called Hanks on his return. He wasn't in a charitable mood for Hanks' illusions, or gifted with enough concentration for Hanks' economics report, in any form.
He still couldn't get a call through to his mother. He'd tried, and the notoriously political phone service was having difficulties this morning. Could he possibly wonder that the gremlins manifested only on the link to the mainland?
The note the Foreign Office had slipped him declared nothing helpful, just that his suspicions were correct: nothing was being decided where it had a damn chance to be sane, in the normal course of advisory councils and university personnel who actually knew history and knew atevi; everything wasbeing decided behind closed doors and in secret meetings of people who weren't elected, hadn't the will of the people, and were going to, he'd bet his life on it, maneuver to cast everything into the hands of the ship, the station, and those willing to relocate there.
And, worrisome small matter, Jase Graham hadn't called back.
"So?" Ilisidi asked. "You've talked with these ship folk. And now they land."
"Two of them. You've gotten my translations."
"To be sure. But they don't answer questions well, do they? Who are they? What do they want? Why did they come back? And why should we care?"
"Well, for one most critical thing, aiji-ma, they've been to places the Determinists have staked a great deal can't exist, they want to export labor off the planet, they want atevi to sell them the materials to make them masters of the universe, and they probably think they can get it cheap because humans on Mospheira weren't talking as if atevi have any say in the business."
"Too bad," Ilisidi said, dicing an egg onto her toast. "So? What does the paidhi advise us? Shall we all rush to arms? Perhaps sell vacation homes on Malguri grounds, for visiting humans?"
"The hell with that," he said, and saw Ilisidi's mouth quirk.
"So?" Ilisidi said, not, after all, preoccupied with her breakfast.
"I have some hope in this notion of paidhiin from the ship. I think it's a very good idea. I can have direct influence at least on Graham, and he seems a sensible, safety-concerned individual. If nothing else, maybe I can scare hell out of him — or her — and have more common sense than I'm hearing out of Mospheira."