Brilliant scholarship. But deal in the day to day language—no. Wilson had made a virtue of refusing that step—which, ironically somewhat thanks to Wilson, had become increasingly likely in the next paidhi’s tenure.
He would say so to Wilson—he would give him full credit. But the number of times they had clashed personally in the past made it a good guess that somewhere—somewhere in the Chairman’s decision to have his secretary communicate with the current paidhi, was Wilson, and at the most inconvenient moment in relations with the aishidi’tat.
Damn, should he send that letter? Should he mend his manners and address himself instead to Chairman Koman? Should he be conciliatory to Wilson?
He could.
He should.
But Wilson would persist in a feud now too deep and too long to resolve, not with so much at stake.
Worse, these people would expect have some power over the children—until they ran head-on into Kate Shugart.
No, damn it all. It should never get that far. There was ample reason to put the children now, by virtue of Tabini’s protective order, into the hands of the State Department, where the Committee on Linguistics could not prevail.
And to do that . . .
He picked up the phone and called Shawn, this time without a lengthy delay getting through.
“Trouble?” Shawn asked.
“A little organizational question,” he said. “I have a recommendation. To put the kids directly under State now, same status as a paidhi during service. The aiji’s protective order is not contingent: it’s current and ongoing. That takes it out of Linguistics in that regard. But here’s the problem. The Linguistics Department does need to deal with the kyo materials—and the kids have interacted with the kyo, and need to maintain their memory of the language . . . but they will not be under my predecessor’s supervision in any sense. I’m sorry to bring a personal grudge into it, but I’m afraid it’s headed there. The children are one problem I can set a fence about. The kyo materials, on the other hand, have to go into the hands of this department, and two-hundred-year-old rules cannot apply with that study.”
A little silence on the other end.
“Academic details,” Shawn said. “With security implications.”
“Exactly. I can talk to Tabini-aiji and get a Guild unit or two specialized in the kyo material, and they will create a response. Over here, the nature of the response tilts naturally toward Linguistics. The Committee has its procedures, and right now we have half the department focused on historic human languages and the dominant half on Ragi—both jealous of resources. And they don’t communicate with me, or haven’t, since events you know. I did send them a letter saying I have materials and will deal with them. Now they send a letter wanting me over there immediately to report and give account. But if I do go, which I can’t do at their date and time, I can’t go under the terms they’d like.”
“Oh, I’ve watched this brew for years.”
“I know. And you know there’s a particular reason I haven’t renewed acquaintances over there since I came back from Reunion.”
“Officially, your contact point is the State Department and has been for years. Adding the kids to that situation is no logistical problem to State. I’ll make a call or two of my own, one to State, one to the University, and you—Do me a favor. Do go. Talk to them.”
“I can’t on their date.”
“Tell me. What would you, yourself, consider adequate for those youngsters, and for the future of the Linguistics Department? I’m sure you’ve had thoughts about that—considering the changes in the last decade. What would you recommend—regarding future paidhiin?”
“God, Shawn . . .”
“Would you have the successorship under the University? Or tied to State?”
“State. It has to be. It may be political, but so is the aijinate. It has to be open to negotiation and subject to reasons entirely separate from University politics.”
“My opinion exactly. State. The University’s had the program, historically. It has the records, the library, the experts, but once the paidhi is designated, he’s not subject to whims of the Committee. We’ve never drawn that line. We’ve never had it established and set down in law. We’ve never found reason. Maybe it’s time.”
“Legal moves will take time. And more committees. Problem is, we’ve got very young non-terrestrial kids facing a situation right now.”
“Who are already spoken for. And therefore, as you suggest—given that status in international relations—they’ll move under State. They’ll help define how that all will work, beyond our tenure. All we need do is get them through undamaged. They have to prepare for another visit with the kyo, based on the work you’ve laid down. And how that sits with the sitting Committee or the current head of Linguistics is completely immaterial—since these kids’ appointment doesn’t involve a need for the Committee’s selection, am I right?”
“You’re right. They are the paidhiin the aiji will accept. There’s no arguing with it.”
“So?”
“I can’t just dump the kyo materials in a box and give it to them. I’ve tried not to come in conflict with the University, considering the kyo materials need their cooperation—but I’ve scarcely gotten my feet on the ground. I’ve had no time to put things in order. And the Committee’s already upset. I don’t want this coming under political pressure, or to have any theories about atevi reluctance to hand them over. The materials aren’t in Mosphei’. That’s the point. They don’t fit in Mosphei’ without going through two layers of translation. And I haven’t got the free time to explain it.”
“State can propose and dispose that, too,” Shawn said. “It’s the impression of my administration that we are a three branch government, and the Committee on Linguistics is not one of those branches. The Secretary of State ranks well above the Committee where it come to the paidhiin, and the President ranks somewhere above the Secretary of State in making foreign policy—which currently involves protection of the relationship we have with Tabini-aiji, and disposition of the kyo materials. And if it comes to a contest between Dr. Koman, Mr. Wilson, and the Secretary of State, I’m not worried. The University President, frankly, has his own problems with the assumptions of the Committee. I hear you want Heyden Court. I hear the University is anxious to shed that bottomless pit of unoccupied expense, and I understand the Art Department can move its display to the downstairs of admin.”
“You work fast.”
“Tom works fast. I had a call from him. I suspect the missive that landed on your desk is the not too remote result of his conversation with the University President and Board of Regents. I also suspect the Committee on Linguistics thinks they can make a flanking attack in your direction, if they can get some independent promise out of you. I’ll be seeing you tomorrow, at the legislative panel, which I hope won’t extend too long, or be more than information-gathering. I think you could safely meet with the Committee on the 17th, and explain the situation to them. I’ll send you over a draft of the agreement with the University for Heyden. So that will be a settled issue. I only wish I could be there.”
Facing the dreaded Committee with State’s complete backing for changes in the way his office functioned? There had been times he had dreamed of such an encounter with Wilson.
Right now it was not the most attractive item on his agenda.
But he might, he thought, warm to it.
15
It was not every guest who had permission to visit Uncle’s basement. Amid all the anxieties in the house above, a frozen place, a noiseless place, a place where, in an odd way, time seemed stopped and voices should be hushed.
And it was a place to have a little peace, a little relief from the goings-on that still had a white cloth at the gate, a cousin still locked in, and the whole estate buzzing with phone calls and Guild talking back and forth with Headquarter
s, which had been going on all day, and did not directly involve him.
So one could pace, or one could try to read, or sit and watch people coming and going. Uncle at least had people to call. The only people Cajeiri knew to call were mani out at Malguri and nand’ Bren over on Mospheira, and neither would have time for a pointless call, he was sure.
But there was the basement. He had his young aishid with him, detailed by the seniors to stay with him constantly—and not to let him do anything stupid, while his senior bodyguard were upstairs doing things that were much more critical to solving the Ajuri problem.
For him—it seemed a good time to go down to the basement and be absent for a while, and to think about things other than problems he could not solve. It was not as good as being out by the stables, or riding around the grounds. But it was distant from the troubles of the house, and full of a thousand things to see, much of it brown and plain, in the colors the earth gave, when it faded the glazes on pottery, ate up iron or faded the blues on an ancient bracelet.
There was so much hush down here, the moment the door to the upstairs closed. It was like visiting a tomb—which it was not, but almost. One could see up close, in the rows of glassed-in shelves, hundreds of items of brown and red pottery, some broken and some mended and some amazingly whole, the cups from which people thousands of years ago had drunk, over which they had laughed, or argued, or plotted, and carried on their lives. There were curious designs painted on them, now that he had time enough to spend. There were people, and gods and demons who surely had had names—one face with tusks like a mecheita, with war-caps, that was many times repeated on a display of what they called timber finials, that had used to cap the ends of beams, and another set he thought must be the moon, with a round face and strange stare . . . that one he thought of as a plump, pleasant lady, a ghost lady, pale and fixed on things nobody else could see.
Amid the cases of pottery stood one glass case taller than any other, holding a skeleton that dominated the collection, a fierce and primitive thing frozen in a posture of defiance.
There was a room of ancient porcelains, one of which was from the Southern Island, from before the Wave. It was very rare, and had its own case. He knew that one was incredibly valuable, more than things made of gold.
Antaro stopped, and took on a very serious expression, doubled in the reflection of the glass case, next to the Southern Island relic. She was listening to something—Guild communications. And so were the others, all stopped, all listening.
“Yes,” Antaro said then, to empty air, and then said, to him. “Nandi, one has just heard—the kyo ship has disappeared . . . when, we are not sure. But we think yesterday.”
Yesterday.
The kyo ship disappeared from the solar system. And nobody on the mainland thought it important?
“You asked to know,” Antaro said. “Apparently, in the other matters—the notification did not get through the system. One believes a message is waiting in Shejidan.”
It upset him. He was not sure why. The upset was too unfocussed. It went everywhere.
“I think it rather important,” he said, “nadiin-ji.”
“We think it important, too,” Antaro said. “We regret, nandi.”
“One has no doubt,” he said, thinking that his father might know—his father might have been informed. Likely nand’ Bren had been informed. Very, very likely mani knew.
But nobody had told him, until it happened to find its way through. Father could have told him—if somebody had bothered to tell Father.
“The assumption,” he said, trying to find words, “that it does not matter—is wrong, nadiin-ji. The assumption that now that we are back and the world is still going on, the kyo are not worth noticing . . .”
“We know,” Antaro said. “We do know, nandi.”
“We are about to bring Reunioners down to the world. We have very nearly had a catastrophe in the heavens. And neither your Guild nor the Messengers seems concerned that I should know.”
Their faces were concerned. They did understand. He was sure of that.
“I shall express this to the seniors, nandi,” Antaro said.
Guild dealt with Guild. But for Antaro to go confront Rieni—who himself might not have gotten the information—that was no easy thing. But if she said it, she would do it.
“No,” he said. “We do not yet know if they are staying. And they would not understand, because they were not there. The world does not understand. The whole world was involved in the troubles down here. The clans do not understand. I am not even sure my father understands, but I think he truly does, because mani does—I know she does, as well as nand’ Bren, and Banichi and Cenedi and the rest. I think they need to talk to the seniors when we all get home. I think we need to have our households all understand. I think—I think there are things that went on that none of us know, except nand’ Bren and his aishid, and mani, maybe. She had it only from what nand’ Bren would tell her, whatever went on, but nand’ Bren was on that ship, and wrote the treaty, and made the agreement. Which is why our space station is still safe up there, because there is nothing we could have done to protect it. I cannot say these things to everybody—because scaring people is not going to help anything. The kyo are gone, and whatever happened when nand’ Bren was on their ship that we do not know—that is not going away, in any sense. It is going on to somewhere else, to where the kyo live, and whatever happens after that, that is not just going away. Ever. So I do have to worry. We all have to worry. If something happens out there we need to know it. And I can never be the one to find it out later. That is what all our households have to know, even the servants, the people who take in the mail and arrange schedules and all that. I have to know. And I have to have confidence that I know, that I will be told first, and fast, or I have to worry about it.”
There were nods. They themselves had not been at Reunion. They could not imagine the voyage. They could not imagine being there to see a strange ship and wait for the messages to creep across the screen while nand’ Bren and the ship-folk tried to figure what to do next.
Or to see the kyo for the first time, when they knew how strong and how dangerous they could be, and how frail mani was, and to be with mani when she found ways to calm a person who might not be reasonable . . .
All that. All that, he knew. And the people handling his messages did not.
“We shall do better,” Antaro said.
“I know you will,” he said. “I know you already do the best anybody can. And you will not have to tell the seniors. We all should. I shall. And if they will not listen to me because I am not my father, then we should know that, too, should we not? They are doing all they can about the situation upstairs and we are too junior to do much about that, but they need to understand that something like this cannot slip by, either. Ever. We shall be respectful. But we shall have things understood.”
“Nandi,” Antaro said very quietly, and there were nods from all of them, there by the ancient beast, by the evidence of a world very different from the world they lived in.
“So,” he said, and shrugged and walked on. “I wish them a good voyage. I wish their people to know we are important, too.”
“The young one,” Antaro said, “Hakuut. He was quite pleasant.”
“He was. I do not think I could introduce him to Mother. But Father might see his character.”
It was a cold thought, that the ship with Hakuut and Prakuyo had just . . . evaporated. Or whatever ships did when they just ceased to be where they had been and turned up somewhere else—through a space that had made that funny plant nand’ Bren had had grow like mad.
Curtains of green plants. I should trim it, nand’ Bren had said, but never had, not until the day they had left the ship for the station, and run, literally run, at points, to get aboard the shuttle and get down to the world to undo the things Murini had done and help Fath
er get back in power.
The world had moved at a kind of breakneck pace, too. So maybe people in general had not had time to realize just how dangerous the kyo visit had been—they had had the Troubles, and families had been upset, and clans disarranged, Ajuri and Kadagidi had fallen—so, well, the world had been busy adjusting, too. People had had no time to learn new things. They had been trying to save the old ones.
So maybe he should not be too angry at the seniors, who were still trying to help patch what Murini and Shishogi had broken. He had to think about that, too, at least as much as he did about events in the heavens. He was obliged to think about that. It was all a question of where you were when things had gotten scary. And the seniors had had their own worries in those days, and still did. The seniors were doing what they could right now to see that the aishidi’tat stayed together, and that Shishogi ultimately lost.
So maybe, he thought, maybe he was the one who needed to understand what he had lost touch with, while he was out there in the heavens.
Maybe together—he and the seniors had a better vision than either did separately. He knew he had things to learn about what had gone on to unseat his father, and everything that still wanted fixing. Part of it, he knew, was because the space program had scared people, and upset their thinking, and crossed old feuds; but part of it, too, was because old problems had never gotten fixed. And meanwhile something had been going on for two hundred years that could have come back and killed them. But if the world had not gotten together—that thing would have never gotten fixed and they would have been like the Reunioners—attacked, with no idea why.
The rooms went on and on, like a house of shadows under all the lively, bright house above, two different worlds, past and present, one living, one lost in the past. Armor racks held the weaponry of ancestors and enemies, with heraldic colors fading, some of them maybe of clans no longer existing.
He had had his guests here, in this place where most servants feared to dust or sweep. Uncle had walked them through, showing them wonderful things, scaring them, too, but in a way that he liked to remember. It was the first time he had really, really understood Uncle, and a time when Uncle had become one of his favorite people. Anybody he meant to trust—should see this place. Should be here. And think about things that people he trusted should think about.