He sighed again and flattened his hand against the shadow-screen, shutting down both programs, and set the glasses aside before the cascade of codes had properly begun. “Derry?” he said, to the general pickup.
“Æ?” A moment later, the botanist stuck her head around the edge of the doorway.
“Got a minute?”
“Sure.” Derebought wiped her hands on the skirts of her thin jacket, and came into the office. The scent of musk and mint clung to her, to her unbound hair, and she looked tired: it was closing on Midsummer, barely a local week, six planetary days, until the holiday, and even the most assimilated indigenes had obligations to fulfill. Those obligations would culminate in the Stane baanket on the second day of Midsummer, when her branch of the clan, or as much of it as could possibly afford to, returned to the gran’mesnie at Gedesrede to feed and be fed by their patriarch. With her off-world training and a job that paid in concord dollars, Derebought was easily the richest member of her mesnie; it was her particular responsibility to stand in for the rest at Midsummer. Tatian glanced down at his desktop, reading the schedule displayed there. She and Mats were scheduled to fly to Gedesrede on Fives and come back three days later: not, Tatian thought, the sort of holiday schedule I’d want.
“What’s up?” she said, and lowered herself into the client’s chair.
“I want your advice,” Tatian said.
“If it’s the analysis,” Derebought answered, “I already gave you my best guess.”
“Which is, you don’t know whether it’s worth it.”
Derebought nodded. “That’s the shape of it. I ran—well, you saw the results. I honestly can’t say if it’ll go any further.”
“I think it’s worth one more round,” Tatian said.
Derebought sighed, and shrugged, turning both palms to the light. Both her palms and the backs of her hands were streaked with faint lines and symbols—marks of the spirits, Tatian knew, but he had forgotten which ones. “I’m inclined to do another set, yes, but if that doesn’t get results, I wouldn’t pursue it. Always assuming, of course, there’s money left in the budget.”
“I checked. There’s enough—go to Buram-Hattrich or Seals, they owe us a favor.”
Derebought nodded, and in the same moment, a shadow crossed the courtyard window. She looked up sharply, and Tatian was startled by the relief he glimpsed in her eyes. The main door opened and closed again with a thud. She pushed herself out of her chair and went to the office doorway. “Reiss? Is that you?”
“Yeah, sorry.” Reiss peered around the door frame, doing his best to look contrite. His dark hair stood up in tufts, uncombed, and he was wearing a Haran tunic Tatian had never seen before. “I—there was some trouble at the Harbor Market last night, and I had to help some friends with bail. Then I overslept. I’m sorry, Tatian.”
“What kind of trouble?” Tatian asked, and didn’t bother to hide his skepticism. He had seen the news that morning—the local narrowcasts as well as the main feed from the port—and there had been no mention of any trouble. There had been talk about the harvest, and contract speculations, and how much the Stillers were spending on their baanket, which would be held in Bonemarche as usual…. “It didn’t make the news.”
“I’m not surprised,” Reiss said sourly. “It wasn’t anything serious, just some rana bands, but the mosstaas cracked down. And a bunch of people got arrested.”
“And one of them called you to post bail,” Derebought said.
Reiss gave her a wary smile, half embarrassed, half ingratiating. “Actually, a friend of a friend called, to see if I’d contribute to the bail, and maybe help get people home from the iron house. It was more of a bribe, anyway, and I had the car last night. But the judge let most of them off without charges.”
“Did you have to give your name?” Tatian asked.
Reiss shook his head. “Renai knows a bondsman, 3e handled it.”
“Good.”
“What was it all about, anyway?” Derebought asked. “I heard at the ceremony that there’d been something at the Souk, but nothing about the harbor.”
Reiss shrugged. “Some ultra-Modernists were dancing for the Meeting—to bring local law into line with the Concord—and some of the Traditionalists got pissy. The mosstaas stepped in, arrested the ranas before a fight started.”
Which meant, Tatian translated, that the issue was gender law again. The Centennial Meeting would open after the new year, its ceremonies marking the five-hundredth anniversary of Hara’s settlement. It was as close to a universal forum as Hara had, the only possible counterbalance to Temelathe’s control of the traditional mechanisms of mesnie, clan, and Watch. It didn’t seem like much of an adversary, not when one looked at the power Temelathe held, but the Most Important Man was taking it very seriously indeed. And maybe he was right to do so: with the Meeting due to open in about eight local months, about six thousand hours by the more conventional reckoning, every political group on Hara was doing its best to get its issues put before the Meeting. And right now, the question of gender law—of whether or not Haran law would acknowledge the existence of mems, fems, and herms—was becoming a major issue. Temelathe Stane was doing his best to keep it from reaching the agenda, or so rumor said, not least because of the various ways he profited from trade. Tatian wasn’t fully sure he believed the talk—after all, there were five sexes, no matter what local law said about it; he couldn’t help thinking that Tendlathe’s well-publicized opposition to off-world influence and trade was just another way to raise prices—but he wasn’t surprised that Temelathe would prefer to see the debate center on gender rather than on his own domination of Haran politics. The Meeting would be an acrimonious one, whatever happened. He said, “Do you still have your meeting on Kittree Row?”
“Yeah, I called. It wasn’t until noon anyway.”
“I suppose it was too much trouble to call here?”
“I only had local access,” Reiss said. “I am sorry.”
Tatian glanced down at the desktop, tacitly accepting both the apology and the excuse. Still, it was half an hour to noon, which left only half an hour to negotiate the worst traffic in Bonemarche.
“That’s why I came straight in,” Reiss said. “We’ll make it.”
Tatian looked at him warily. Now that it actually came to dealing with an unlicensed indigene, he was nervous, which was not entirely unreasonable, either. But then, her rates had to be better than the prices the port technicians could charge. And if he didn’t get the system fixed before the Midsummer bargaining began, he would be worse than useless. “Right. Let’s go.” He touched the shadowscreen as he spoke, securing the desktop and telling the system when he would be back.