“We have all been very well,” his father said, as if they were at some official function with hundreds of witnesses, and they were obliged to give only felicitous answers.
But unlike his human guests’ habit of saying absolutely everything and anything at dinner—manners insisted there be no unpleasant talk and no business discussed at his parents’ proper table. He pretended to eat. He wished he just could go to his suite and go to bed.
His father laid his spoon down with his soup half-finished, and servants hastened to remove that dish, and hovered over Cajeiri’s. Cajeiri carefully laid his spoon down on the spoon-rest, and his soup likewise went away, replaced by a dish of pickle.
His father made no move. He made none.
The servants left the room.
“Did your guests enjoy their visit?” his father asked.
“Very much,” he managed to say. “Truly very much, honored Father. Thank you.”
“You will want them to visit again, I suppose.”
“Yes,” he said. There was a knot in his throat so extreme he could hardly keep his voice steady. “Yes, honored Father. I do.”
His father nodded.
“One promises,” he said desperately, and then thought that tying one thing to another immediately might not be the best idea, and maybe the subject was too close to discussing business at the table. “One wishes.”
His father said, wryly, “We shall make a judgment closer to the time, and for reasons of the time, son of mine. Please make your mother happy, and do not let Boji escape near the baby.”
“He—”—would not hurt her, was instant to his lips, but Great-grandmother would say, Never stand surety for a scoundrel, and Boji was, admittedly, a scoundrel when it came to escapes. “I shall be very careful.”
“Excellently done, on your part, these last days,” his father said. “And your mother also says so. Eat your pickle. Or had you rather have the meat course?”
His stomach was beyond uneasy. The knot would not go away. “I think I had rather the meat course, honored Father. We were up all night. No one could sleep.”
“In such distress?”
“It was the last time we would be sure to have, honored Father. We wanted to talk.”
“One understands,” his father said, and tapped his bowl with his knife, summoning the servants. “We shall have the meat course,” he said, “and a little carbonated juice with it.”
Fruit juice was all that sounded good. He was glad to see the strong-smelling pickle go away. He never wanted to smell it again. The seasonal meat arrived: fish, and bland. The fruit juice was the best thing.
“Very good,” his father said, and just then Mother came back in. It was, one was glad to note, quiet in the hall, from the direction of his own suite, and quiet from the farther hall, where his sister was.
Mother settled quietly into place, saying nothing about the two courses missed. A servant provided the meat course, and the fruit juice, and she took both.
“Our son was just saying,” Father said, “that he had a very good time. His guests were sad to leave, and that, being as young and impractical as youngsters may be, they stayed up all last night talking. I believe our son will wish to go to bed soon.”
“Will you wish to see your sister first?” his mother asked, and oh, he was not his great-grandmother’s great-grandson for nothing.
“Oh, yes,” he managed to say, though by now everything sounded distant to his ears, and he only wanted to lie down. “Thank you, honored Mother. Father.” He drank all the juice, and ate two bites of the meat dish; and managed a spill of gravy onto his collar lace.
“One regrets,” he said, mortified.
“No matter,” his father said. “I think our son may better do with rest than food, daja-ma. Shall we not all have our dessert and then go visit Seimiro?”
“We shall,” his mother said.
There was a light dessert, frothy and tart. That tasted good. Cajeiri had that, all of it, and as his father signaled an end to the service, and thanked the cook, he pushed himself up from the table, and went with his father and his mother to see his baby sister.
Seimiro’s crib was in the room with the windows he so envied, with the windows all shut and curtained. She was darker than he remembered, a much healthier color, and tightly wrapped in blankets. She looked content, asleep with her thumb in her mouth.
“She is very pretty.” It was not a lie, but it was certainly an exaggeration. She was a baby. Nobody knew what she would look like. But there she was, all new and the object of Mother’s attention. There he was, with a spot of gravy on his collar lace.
But he was indisputably his father’s heir. His father had seen to that, just an hour before Seimiro was born. And Seimiro had years and years to go before she would be any threat to him at all.
He felt no strong man’chi to her. He noted that in himself. When he had parted from his guests, he had felt as if some piece of him were torn away. For Seimiro, he had only the dimmest of feelings—simply an awareness that she was his mother’s baby; and relief that, because Seimiro existed, he was not obliged to belong that closely to his mother and not obliged to feel strongly attached. He had honestly hoped to feel something a little more for his sister than he did, one way or the other. He had thought he felt something the night Seimiro was born, but all that had faded now, strange to say. He was exhausted, fresh from company he deeply cared about, that he could not have—and she was just this sleepy little lump that, in possession of a room he would like to have, kept her eyes shut and her thumb in her mouth, and ignored him.
Disappointing. Great-grandmother said he would waken to certain feelings, and that right feelings would be automatic because he was atevi.
So—why did he feel robbed of his human associates? And why did he have no proper feeling right now where it regarded his sister-of-the-same-parents?
Was he angry that she existed?
He thought not.
Was he disappointed that she turned out to be just a baby, who would be a baby for years, and probably live in this room with the windows he coveted, getting favors his mother would not give him, until she was older than he was.
That was stupid. There was no way she could be anything other than a baby—though before she was born he had imagined teaching her and running about with her, and showing her all the fun things to do. He had felt very warm and good about that Seimiro, who in his head had been something like eight.
Well, there she was, and there she would be for months and months, just a blanket-wrapped lump, who would grow very slowly into Somebody who probably would take his mother’s side whenever there was an argument.
Eight was years away. And by the time Seimiro was old enough to do stupid things with anybody—he himself would be too old and responsible to do them.
Time worked far too slowly at Seimiro’s end of things and far too fast at his.
“Very pretty,” he said sadly, and put out his hand to touch his sister’s tiny hand. “When she can play games I shall be too old for them.”
There was a little silence around that. He had been very stupid to say it.
“Your life will not end with your fifteenth birthday,” his father said, seeming amused. “Believe me.”
Seimiro wriggled about and clenched her other fist, eyes still tightly shut.
He finally felt something toward her, then. He felt sorry for her, because she was going to be far more lonely than he had ever been, certainly having no chance of flying on a starship and meeting other children. Nobody unauthorized would ever approach Seimiro—unless she somehow got the chance to escape and travel with Great-grandmother. Or with him.