Air seemed scant. He was walking a ledge far past his own scientific expertise — far beyond his ability to prove — and on a major, dangerous point of atevi belief.
"I don't know these things, aiji-ma. I'd wish the astronomers of the Bergid and the scholars on Mospheira could talk to each other. But I'm the only one who could translate. And the emeritus was using mathematical symbols I don't remotely know how to render — I'm not even sure human mathematics has direct equivalents. I suspect some of them are couched in the Ragi language, and if they rely on me to get them into Mosphei', humans are never going to understand."
"Such delicate modesty."
"No. Reality. Most humans don't speak your language, aiji-ma, because most humans aren't nearly as good in math as I am. You view it as so important to know those numbers — and we don't, aiji-ma. We can't add that fast in our heads. We haveto approximate — not that we're disrespectful of atevi concepts; we just can't add that fast. Our language doesn't have your requirements, your expressions, your concepts. At times my brain aches just talking with you — and for a human, I'm not stupid. But I'm working as hard as I can sometimes just talking to you, especially about math — far from conveying folded-space mathematics to anyone whose symbols I can't remotely read, nand' dowager. I'm reduced to asking the man's young students what he said and finding out that theydon't understand all he says, even with their advantage in processing the language."
There was long silence, once he stopped talking. Long silence. Ilisidi simply sat and stared at him. Wind stirred the edge of the tablecloth, and blew the scent of diossi flowers to the table.
"Cenedi will see you out," Ilisidi said.
"Nand' dowager," he said, feeling both fear — and real sadness in his sense of failure. He rose from the table, bowed, and went to the door and inside the apartment.
Cenedi met him there.
"I've offended her," he said to Cenedi quietly. "Cenedi-ji, she doubts me."
"Justly?" Cenedi did him the courtesy of asking.
"No," he said fervently. "No. But I can't make her understand I'm not smart enough to do what she thinks I've done. I may have given her the ravings of a madman. I hope I haven't. But I can't read his writings to judge. I could only copy them. I can't judge the quality of it. I don't know what I've given her. I hoped it would do some good."
"One heard," Cenedi said as they crossed the room toward the door.
"At least — tell her I wish her well, and hope for her eventual good regard."
"One will pass the message," Cenedi said, "nand' paidhi."
Banichi picked him up — and asked, since the paidhi wasn't bothering to put on a cheerful face, not how it had gone, but what had happened; and he could only shrug and say, "Nothing good, Banichi. I did something wrong. I can't tell what."
Banichi answered nothing to that. He thought Banichi might try to find out where he'd misstepped — easier for Banichi to ask Cenedi outright, since Banichi had the hardwiring to understand the answer. But it seemed to a human's unatevi senses that he'd simply pushed Ilisidi too far and given her the suspicion she'd very plainly voiced to him: that he was Tabini's, a given; that the whole Hanks business was a setup possibly engineered by Tabini himself; and one could leap from that point to the logical conclusion that if Hanks was a setup designed to push atevi faster than the conservatives wanted to go, it couldn't happen without Bren-paidhi being in on it.
Which meant — perhaps — that in Ilisidi's mind all the relations she had had with him were in question, including how far he'd be willing to go to sweep Ilisidi away from her natural allies. Never mind the broken shoulder: Ilisidi was surrounded by persons of extreme man'chi, persons who'd fling themselves between Ilisidi and a bullet without an editing thought: she was usedto people who took risks. She might not know humans as well as Tabini, but she had expectations of atevi and she had experience of Tabini that might lead her at least to question, and not to risk her dignity or her credibility on someone not within her man'chi.
She hadn't poisoned him. He'd not flinched from the possibility. He'd surely scored points in that regard. But he'd trod all over atevi beliefs, atevi pride — which with Ilisidi was very personaclass="underline" Ilisidi had unbent with him a little and he'd used that, or advantaged himself of it, and asked the dowager to support Tabini —
The wonder was she hadn't poisoned him. And he was attached to Ilisidi — he didn't know exactly how it had happened, but he was as upset at her accusation of him as he'd be if he'd somehow crossed the other atevi he'd grown close to.
Which didn't include, somehow, Tabini. Not in that sense of reliance and intimacy. Not in the sense that —
That he'd damn well regretted Jago had left his room night before last, experimentation untried. And he was mortally glad Jago had stayed out of his close company the last two days.
But he longed to find her alone and find out what she did think, and whether she was upset, or embarrassed, which he didn't want; and didn't want to risk the relationship he had with her and with Banichi, without which — he was completely —
Alone.
And scared stiff.
From moment to moment this morning he dreaded the intrusion of other humans. He didn't know what to do if the interface went bad. He hada certain security in his atevi associates and he had to spend, hereafter, the bulk of his free time, such as it was, teaching a foreign human what that foreign human might not ever really understand.
After which, in a number of years, Jase Graham boarded an earth-to-orbit craft and went back to his ship, leaving the paidhi — whatever the paidhi had left.
He was in a major funk, was what had hit him. Two days ago he'd looked forward to Graham's arrival as the panacea for his troubles. But that was when at least his atevi world had been holding together.
And the paidhi always had that image of the clock stopped. The ultimate, shocked surprise of that moment that atevi had reacted in self-preserving attack on the very humans who really, really likedatevi.
He had to get his mind back in order, his hurts and his self-will packed back in their little boxes, and, God, most of all he couldn't let himself start brooding over how much atevi didn't likehim. Ilisidi never had likedhim. Ilisidi had found him amusing, entertaining, informative, a dozen other things — and now he wasn't. Now things were too serious. Humans were coming down from the sky. Ilisidi had decisions to make and she'd make them for atevi reasons. If he had a duty, it was to inform Tabini of Ilisidi's reaction.
And Ilisidi knew it.
"Banichi-ji, Ilisidi asked me —" One didn't say suspects, didn't say, implied: when the paidhi was deep in the mazes of atevi thought, the paidhi said exactly what hadhappened, not what he interpreted to have happened. "— asked me whether Tabini had set Hanks-paidhi, Geigi, the question, the astronomer happening to come up with a possible answer and all at this crisis."