When you get back to the world, Great-grandmother had told him, just last year, when you are back among atevi, among people who act properly, you will find atevi feelings in yourself, and you will have a much surer compass than you do right now.
That meant a needle would swing to the world’s north, no matter how one tried to turn it somewhere else. That was what mani had meant when she said that.
And sometimes his feelings really were like that: he did feel an attraction. He felt it toward mani, of course, and toward his parents. But he did not think mani had ever expected he would have such a strong swing of that compass toward three humans, who, as mani had explained it, had compasses of their own, which might eventually swing to a very different place.
Mani had said his internal compass would get stronger and surer as he grew.
Well, it had done that.
It had done it, even during this visit of his three guests. He had gotten far more determined about his own future, and he had thought matters through. He had no question at all that his internal compass swung to his father, and to mani, and to nand’ Bren and even to Great-uncle Tatiseigi, who had really surprised him; but there was no question either that Gene and Irene and Artur had a very necessary place in that arrangement, and he was not going to lose them.
Humans can change loyalty, nand’ Bren had told him once.
“Will you change, nandi?” he had asked nand’ Bren right back, and nand’ Bren had looked a little distressed.
“I could not,” nand’ Bren had said. “No. I would not.”
He thought about that, as the bus began to roll.
If nand’ Bren could be so absolutely certain of himself, could not these three?
And if it was a feeling nand’ Bren had, could not these three have it?
Gene wanted to come back. Artur worried about his parents, and tried to find what made everybody happy—which was why Artur was so quiet, and thought so much; but at some time in the future Artur had to make himself happy, and Artur was going to find that out. He was sure Artur could be happy here, with things to investigate, like rocks, and thunderstorms—
Irene, now—
Irene was the one who was not going into a happy situation, back on the station.
Irene and her mother—like Gene, Irene had no father—did not agree. He certainly understood not agreeing with parental rules, but Irene followed them only because she had to. That was what Irene said.
Gene had gotten arrested by security and gotten a bad mark on station. He did not so much defy the rules as ignore the ones that inconvenienced him. Cajeiri understood that.
Artur would ask permission and then try to reason his way through the rules. Artur was fairly timid-acting, but that was because Artur was thinking how to get past the problem and still not break any rules.
But if Artur ran out of time, Artur would do what he felt he had to.
Irene, however—he feared Irene would just explode someday. That was what he always felt, dealing with her. Irene would reach a point she would just explode. She had changed her hair before she came down, gone from dark as atevi to fair as Bren, and her frown when they asked said they were not to ask about it. She had cut up most of her station clothes with scissors the second morning in Tirnamardi, and thrown the pieces away, very upset with them, saying only that she needed room in her baggage. She had been collecting writing paper, even scraps, and he had given her whole fresh packets of it, so there was a lot of stationery in her personal luggage right now, along with two picture books he had given her, and her prettiest clothes from his birthday festivity. She was going to wear her riding clothes to go to the spaceport. Irene was very, very smart, smarter than any of them, he suspected. She was certainly the best at languages, and she was, of all of them, a little scary, possibly because Irene herself was always a little scared. What she was scared of, Cajeiri was not sure—maybe she was scared of her own questions. She was a little unlike the others. Her skin was brown. Her eyes were dark. Her frown was like a sky clouding over. And she was so scared of flying she got sick and probably would again.
He so wished he could help her.
He’d said that to Gene, last night, about Irene needing the rest of them, about Irene just exploding someday, and Gene had understood him.
“We can’t always get to her apartment,” Gene said, and tried to explain, saying, “Like the Bujavid. Like the third floor. Not everybody comes there. Security zone, where Irene is.”
So Irene’s mother had to be somebody more important than Gene’s mother and Artur’s parents. And if Irene lived in a security zone, then he was worried for her. Irene’s mother had been against her coming down until the very last moment. And then Irene’s mother had changed her mind for no reason they really understood. If Irene herself knew why, she had not told them; but at least she had gotten to come.
There could be a problem, a very big problem with Irene, on the next visit.
If her mother was important, then politics was involved.
And he knew what that meant.
· · ·
It was a fair long road from Najida to the train station, one Bren had traveled more often than most roads—and it was a faster trip these days, thanks to peace in the district. Najida cooperated nowadays in road maintenance with the township to the south, with Geigi’s estate, and with the township to the north, so Bren had found himself the unlikely owner of, to date, a fire truck, a yacht, an ambulance, a road grader, a large truck, a dump truck, and a formidable earthmover that could variously hammer a large rock or pick it up in a bin. Combined with other districts, Najida could do substantial jobs for the district, like road repair, employing no few locals in the process.
So he was somewhat proud of the local road. Not so fine as some, but good enough for market traffic, all the way to the township in the south, and again to Geigi’s estate.
Najida district was his home, in a sense. It had become that. He cared about the people. He cared for them. Whenever he was here, he heard their problems and solved them if he could, whether with application of his personal income or by hearing both sides of an argument and sorting it out as fairly and sensibly as he knew how. He maintained the few roads, he lent transport at need. He paid medical bills. And when he was not here, the Najidi could write to him in the capital, and he would do what he could for the district from the Bujavid—which very often was enough to handle the difficulty. It made him extraordinarily happy, being able to do that.
But now he was traveling back to a different existence, to do a wider job, while Najida disappeared behind them in a cloud of dust. In that other job, there was far less thanks, but it mattered far more to the outside world.
And now Jase wanted him to expand that endeavor.
He and Jase sat and talked while the sun rose and the dawn landscape ripped past the unshielded windows of the bus.
They weren’t using the window shades this morning. The youngsters and Jase had so little time left to see the world, and it was an hour void of other traffic. Trucks might come later today, picking up or delivering goods or, rarely, passengers. But now the road was vacant and they had an unobstructed view of grasslands and small groves of trees.
It was a special train they were meeting, at a very early hour, and indeed that old-fashioned train was waiting as the bus climbed the barely perceptible rise. The engine sat steaming a plume into the pink morning light, ready to roll.
The station where it waited was a modest and rustic place. There was a newly painted little office, next to a small plank-sided warehouse, a wooden loading platform and the requisite water and sand towers of more modern vintage. The venerable and elegant steam engine had only two cars at the moment—one a standard baggage car, the other an old-fashioned passenger car with windows that only looked like windows.