Stockpiles — of goods critical to a space program.
He'd protested he wasn't an engineer, he didn't know… and the interrogator had said… you slip numbers into the dataflow. You encourage sectarian debates to delay us…
The argument of Ilisidi's allies. Ilisidi's constituency, the constituency Ilisidi had ostensibly betrayed — but never count an ateva to have changed sides completely. There were always points of stress in an association.
Sectarian debates to delay us…
And he'd said… We build test vehicles. Models. Wetest what we think we understand before we give advice that will let some ateva blow himself to bits, nadi…
He'd thought that was all the truth. He'd told that to an interrogator whose identity he still didn't know, a man who might have been Ilisidi's, or a partisan of someone affiliated to Ilisidi.
He'd hadn't known then… about the ship. He hadn't understood the matter about sectarian debates. Or the significance of stockpiles of materials for a space program. He'dtalked to them about aircraft. He'dmaintained human innocence…
He lost his place in the tape. His fingers were cold as he punched buttons and ran it back, and heard the section through again, and knewhe'd promised Ilisidi along with Tabini a transcript of all his translations.
Stockpiles… the atevi held to be extensive. Stockpiles of minerals Mospheira didn't otherwise have…
Stockpiles begun — God knew how long ago. The paidhi, on informed opinion, didn't believethey could be that extensive, since the paidhi knew with fair certainty what had generally gone to Mospheira and what Mospheira would use — unless there were Defense Department secrets too deep and too old for the current paidhi to know, or trading — as could sometimes happen — that didn't get reported accurately to Shejidan.
There were bunkers in the high center of Mospheira, places fenced off from hikers and guarded by people with guns, which citizens accepted — you didn't go there. You didn't mess with those perimeters. They were antiquated, increasingly so, in an increasingly peaceful world — at least — the idea of air raid shelters seemed antiquated, in his generation. But there'd been fear of atevi landings on the beaches before there'd been aircraft.
There'd been fear of atevi air attacks, when they'd given atevi aviation, and situated aircraft manufacturing on the mainland. The bunkers were supposed to be nerve centers, critical command posts, things to make sure no attack ever drove humans to the brink of extinction again.
They saidthey were command posts. Nothing about how deep they were, how extensive they were — or what they contained. And ifthey contained what he'd been asked about, if there were stockpiles the President of Mospheira could use to deal with the ship —
Mospheira couldn'tcall the aiji's bluff. He couldn'thave set Tabini up to make a threat of boycott and have Mospheira go around the obstacle with some damned antique storage dump.
But it was supply. Even if it existed — it didn't manufacture itself. The manufacturing plants that did exist on Mospheira couldn't be converted at a snap of the fingers to do what they hadn't been designed to do —
But Mospheira didn't educate the paidhiin in what the Defense Department did, or had, or wanted: it was specifically excluded, that area of inquiry. And when the government and State specifically cleared some plastics factory on the East Frontage for ecological impact — you trusted they were making domestic-use articles.
The Department sent the paidhiin into the field not knowing that for an absolute, examined fact. The paidhiin knew there were no death rays. He knew that as an article of faith. There were no nuclear installations. There were no truly exotic sites: the colonists hadn't had those kind of weapons and hadn't given atevi a nuclear capability… yet.
But this talk of stockpiles made a chill down his back, and told him the paidhi might for once in a career of mandated consultations before moving truly need to consult — and might now, if his current actions hadn't set the Defense Department on its ear and sent the Secretary of Defense straight to the President's door with a reckoning of exactly how far and with what offer to the spacefarers they could call Tabini's hand and defy a boycott.
Dammit, he couldn't trust his files regarding a history he had no idea whether the censor Seekers had reached, or not reached — he couldn't trust what he'd been told. How did the paidhi even trust that his own education hadn't censored or even lied about vital facts? Once censorship was at issue — how did anyone, any official trust how far it would go, when it would have begun, whose information it would have censored, or what it would have constructed as a substitute for the truth? Humans had come close to annihilation. They hadn'thad weapons. Atevi in the early days couldn't trade them aluminum or titanium or any space-age material. Mospheirans could get plastics, they could get anything vegetable fiber could produce, anything they could get from limited drilling along the North Shore; they had solar energy and electricity, but they hadn't been set up to realize a need two centuries along and slip enough into storage to hold out against the interlinking of the Mospheiran/atevi economies —
Mospheirans hadn't, all along, been that damn canny, that damn persistent, or that damned concerned about their future — the radicals might wish they'd been, the radicals might have a fantasy they'd been, and maybe something did exist in stockpiles, but it didn't translate to real capacity to hold against an atevi cutoff of supplies —
— or to anticipate some traitorous paidhi cutting a deal with Phoenixand trying to exclude Mospheira, all for the planetary good. They couldn'thave him boxed in. Neversay to atevi at large that the aiji had made a threat he couldn't back or a promise that made him look foolish. Blood could flow in the streets if that happened. Blood was ready to flow in the streets, if he made such a mistake.
He wrote, Aiji-ma, regarding the most recent ship conversations with Mospheira, the expected behind the doors negotiations have proposed human stockpiles of materials I have proposed you threaten to withhold. My hope based on experience living on and traveling on the island is that they're small, not containing everything a space program needs, and that they might be used for bargaining and for attempting to attract the ship to their point of view, and that the Mospheiran government might exaggerate their size in an attempt to get a better agreement.
This, however, does not guarantee I am right about their size. If they should be larger, I have advised you badly, and you must take whatever measures you deem appropriate.
On the other hand, the ship can determine even buried reserves from orbit, as well as the character of factories. It is my hope that factories are not sufficient even if such stockpiles exist, and that they cannot be built in a timely enough fashion to satisfy the ship's leaders.