And that was that. He all but shook from anger, in the realization that from now on he would be watched—lucky if he could get out of his room, let alone the apartment. It was not fair. Nothing was fair. Nothing in his life was the way he wanted any more, and now Banichi, of all people, who used to play games with him, had turned on him and told him not to be out without real Guild in attendance, and Bren-nandi was furious, and probably would talk to his father.
And Jadiri was absolutely furious. He had gotten past Jaidiri when Jaidiri was in a meeting with staff, he had planned it that way, and now Jaidiri knew it. Probably Jaidiri was in a great deal of trouble with his father, new in his job as he was: Jaidiri was professionally embarrassed. His new servants, Uncle’s people, too, were embarrassed. Everybody was upset with him, because everybody was going to get into trouble for letting him get outside.
Well, so was he upset, but nobody cared that he was upset. Nobody at all cared what he thought. Mani-ma went away with Uncle, and Bren moved out, and his father and mother had seized control of him, but just installed him as one more obligation on their busy schedules. They paid no attention to him except at dinner-times, when they spared an hour to talk to him.
Damn, damn, damn! He would say the word and nobody cared to stop him. Nobody cared at all: they just shoved him in a room to be let out only for supper, and they embarrassed him in front of Jegari and Antaro.
He flung himself down at his desk and picked up his sketch of the ship and flung it. Papers scattered, and Jegari and Antaro were too wise to move to pick them up. He wanted to rip things in shreds. And they just stood, part of the disaster, finding nothing at all they could do to help.
“One desires some of that cake from last night, nadiin,” he said finally, which gave them an excuse to leave, as they could do and he could not: they could pass the guards at his door without being tracked—even if nobody gave them keys, such as other guards had. They could at least go out and do something useful. He remembered the cake from last night’s supper. He had liked it. He wanted some sort of comfort for an upset stomach. He wanted meanwhile to calm down and use his wits. He could hear mani-ma telling him that he was a fool when he was angry and nobody wanted to take orders from a fool.
Maybe they could filch keys. It was not like keys on the ship, which were cards if they were not personal codes or thumbprints: they never had figured how to get by the thumb locks; but the Bu-javid keys were metal, and people carried them, and might be careless if he kept his eyes open.
He could all but see the passages on the ship. Gene and Artur, and him, with their breath frosting in the light Gene had, and Gene saying, “We can go wherever we like. I know how.”
He picked up his own papers off the floor. He straightened them into order, and tried not to choke on his own breath.
How could he have forgotten any of the details that had just come back to him? How could he have forgotten details about Gene? His own memory was fading in this place, after hardly more than a handful of days, and he might forget other things, important things. He might start speaking only Ragi, and lose a lot of his ship-speak, if he was not careful.
That was the plan, was it not? This was such a different place, and the things he forgot were the very things the grownups wanted to take away from him. That was what they were doing—taking things away piece by piece, so he would forget, and be what they wanted….
Well, he would refuse to forget. He made a little note: he drew a pathetic little figure beside it, that was Gene, and gave it dark hair. He wished he could draw better. He would draw his room on the ship, just the way it was, with the simple little bed, and the bath, and the things he had had in the cabinets, things he liked, which he had not been able to bring down with him—he’d just packed a few changes of clothes, was all, but everything he had up there was still up there, over his head….
And it would be for years, as far out of reach as the moon.
Even the moon was a place, when they were up there. The earth was somewhere else. Everything he knew was different up there. It was wider. Warmer. It had nooks and levels and places he could explore or just sit for hours without guards breathing close behind him.
He missed it all. He missed it terribly.
He drew Artur and Irene, stupid, simple little figures, just to remind him of the details he had gotten back.
And with a knock and a rattle at the door, Jegari and Antaro came back to the room accompanied by one of the under-cooks—of course it would never be just a piece of cake they got—no, no, it was one of the cooks, who personally served him tea, juice, and a generous plate of the requested cake. He found it unappetizing now that he had gotten it with such a fuss, but he insisted Jegari and Antaro share some with him, and have some juice, and they seemed happier because they thought he was. The cook took the dishes, and left the three of them alone again.
At least the shakes had stopped, and Cajeiri finally found it in him to apologize to them.
“One is very sorry, nadiin-ji, for getting you in trouble.”
“We would wish to take the blame, nandi,” Antaro said.
“You shall not! I shall tell my father it was my idea, and it was.” His anger rose up again, and he remembered what mani-ma had said about orders from fools. “But we did find out about the dish, and we did talk to Jase-aiji. So we gained something.”
“Indeed,” Jegari said faintly.
“Jase-aiji is an ally of nand’ Bren,” he informed them, “and used to live here on earth. He parachuted down. He was lucky to survive. Then he flew back with the first shuttle. Nand’ Bren and he are very close allies. And Jase-aiji keeps his word. He will talk to Gene, and Gene may well send me a message when Jase-aiji calls nand’ Bren back. So it was not a failure.”
They looked impressed with that reasoning, and he felt comforted by the look on their faces. Most of all, when he thought of those familiar names, the ship became a place again, in his head, and would not immediately go away.
When you have atevi around you, mani-ma had said, you will find their actions speak to you in an atevi way. You will find a degree of comfort with them that you will not find with your human associates. You will see.
He had not believed that prediction, not for a moment. But, truth be told, there was something that tugged at his attention when he faced Jegari and Antaro, the same way that when mani-ma spoke, or when his father or mother did, his own intentions slid, and his insides wanted one thing and his head wanted another.
But a third thing, inside him, resisted any trick that was going to separate him from his earliest real associates, and that part he clung to, reminding himself that he was not an infant, to be distracted from his intentions by some bright bauble, or a diverting voice. Forgetting was what the adults all planned for him, and it was too bad Jegari and Antaro had fallen right into that plan of mani-ma’s: they deserved an untainted connection to him, but he was never quite sure that someone had not put them up to their sudden declaration of man’chi, be it an ambitious father, or the lord of the Taibeni, or mani herself….
Which was so wretched and horrid a thought it stained everything and made him angrier than he was.
He was not happy, being pulled in that many directions, but it was what it was, as mani herself would say. And he would not just sit down and react like a baby. He had his ship-plan. And he remembered, and he knew now the trick was to think of the names and the faces and remember everything they had done. Every night before he went to sleep, from now on, he would put himself back on the ship, face-to-face with those he knew were loyal to him for no reason but their own choice. Anything else was suspect, since it came to him with increasing force that if someone wanted him to do things, and here he was, because of his age, all ready to open up to the first ateva who just happened along into his life…
Well, someone as clever as his great-grandmother and his father would make sure their own people came along and got next to him earliest of all, would they not? And other people were ever so
eager to shove their offspring his direction. It was like one of those movies, where people wanted to marry off a daughter, only he was the daughter, and it was not marrying, it was much more serious: it was getting into his man’chi, forever, which just made him mad. And if he ever found out Antaro and Jegari had been pushed into it—he would be furious. Not with them. But with someone.
So there. He had figured that out almost from the start. He had recovered from the first astonishment that Jegari and Antaro had joined him, and they were well-intentioned, and good, and he was sure it was a safe enough connection for him to have, and a natural and useful one: the Taibeni Ragi were relatives, after all, and it was a way of making sure Great-Uncle Tatiseigi could not claim him exclusively—Uncle was at odds with the Taibeni, and the other way around, which meant he was the point at which they had to make peace, to deal with him: it was good for both sides, he thought, and they could not have stood off the Kadagidi without both sides working together.
But it meant that he was on his guard about guards and servants any other relative appointed, and he was entirely on his guard about the ones Uncle gave him, and he certainly wanted no one from his mother’s Ajuri relatives.
If there was anybody under the Bu-javid roof he truly trusted, it was nand’ Bren: Great-grandmother said nand’ Bren had no real feelings of man’chi, but she had said, too, that what Lord Bren had in him was something else, a human thing, but steady, and centered very firmly on certain people. One could never predict entirely what he would do, but one could rely on it to be in certain people’s interest, sometimes entirely against their will.
So, well, was that not like Gene? Great-grandmother relied on Lord Bren, and while Lord Bren did things that just set uncle on edge, he was still reliable. Safe. Connected. Why was it not the same as man’chi?
But oh, he wished he had not showed out so notably at Lord Bren’s party. Most of all he wished that Lord Bren had not gotten angry with him. He had deserved it…he just had not expected it, because it took a lot to make Lord Bren angry.
And maybe mani-ma was right and nobody but another human could understand what nand’ Bren thought, but surely Lord Bren would understand better than anyone how he felt about his associates up on the ship. Lord Bren knew that strong feelings could exist between humans and atevi: he knew Lord Bren slept with one of his own staff, which was, he suspected, completely scandalous, even if he were not human—everybody tried so hard to pretend it was not going on, but it was, and he had never dared ask Great-grandmother whether she thought that was all right.
Now it might be forever until he could ask her questions like that. He certainly had no intention of asking his parents, or of letting on that he even knew it went on. He did at least know that such a relationship with staff had gotten past great-grandmother’s very close scrutiny, and he had at least an inkling that Great-grandmother and Cenedi had a close relationship, too, whether or not it was proper. And he was certainly not going to mention that relationship to his parents.
He was not moved to have such ties himself down here on the planet. He hoped he never would be, well, not for a long time, because that was one more person who would try to complicate his life and tie him to earth. But he was sure if there was anybody as lonely as he was, it had to be nand’ Bren, who was different from everyone around him, and if Bren needed to sleep with Jago, or Great-grandmother needed Cenedi—that was all right, if it made them happy. When they were together, they were—really together. Happy. He could feel it. And he had had just the littlest notion how it felt to be that connected—before Jegari and Antaro, and before they all had to leave the ship, and before people started shooting at each other, proving only that atevi could be just as stupid as the humans they had rescued out in space. And it all was designed to mess up his life, which had been as happy as could be up on the ship.
He had not even the ability to call outside his room, now. Communications were just…backward…on the whole planet, except the Assassins’ Guild, and maybe over on the island. The net they had used on the ship did not even exist on the planet. It certainly ought to. If he had Gene, and they had computers, it would exist in short order….
Except nothing connected to anything, and why it failed to connect was something he could find out inside an hour—if he were connected to a library. It was all just disheartening.
He thought about it, and thought through the things he knew how to do, and finally inquired, via Jegari, through his uncle’s guards outside, whether his father would see him alone. Well, one of his two guards would go to inquire: they were cautious.
But: Yes, the answer came back, after a lengthy wait.
In the meanwhile, in all hope, he had had Jegari bring out his best coat—he immediately put it on and lost no time at all. He exited his rooms with his own guards, swept up the one of Uncle’s security who had delivered the message, and who escorted him as far as the door where his parents’ security waited.
His father, it turned out, was having tea with his mother.
He had rather have dealt with one at a time, but in the terms of his query—he supposed it counted as alone. He covered his dismay with a little bow, and in great propriety, waited for a signal. His mother gave it, and he came to them and presented himself with a second little bow to his mother and a third to his father.
“Well,” his mother said, reaching out for his hand. He gave it, and she straightened his already straight cuff—he was absolutely certain it was straight—and patted his hand as if he were a toddler. “What occasions this finery, son of mine?”
His mother very well knew he had just gotten caught in the halls. He was absolutely certain of it, and his father sipped his tea, not quite looking at him. His planned approach began to fall apart, if his father was going to let his mother deal with him, and particularly if he was due for a punishment.
“One greatly regrets, honored Mother—” It was Great-grandmother’s best manners, her most precise formalities. “One regrets a breach of propriety, Mother-mine. And honored Father.” Another bow, difficult with his hand imprisoned, and he looked the while at his father, trying to judge his reaction. “One had come to pay respects to nand’ Bren in his office, and when nand’ Bren reached the ship by radio—it was exciting. Everyone was excited, and one very regrettably made a misjudgment, a great misjudgment. Nand’ Bren will not complain, but it was a great embarrassment.”
“What precisely did you do?” his father asked, looking straight at him, and gave a hint of that expression that terrified councillors.
But he was ready for it: he had assumed his most sober face. “One interrupted the paidhi-aiji, honored Father, when he was speaking to Jase-aiji: I spoke to Jase-aiji myself. I know him very well, honored Father. It hardly seemed rude at the moment. It was, however, a great misjudgment.”
“And what was the nature of this address?”
“I sent a small courtesy to my associates, to say that I am safe and well. They must be worried.”
“Indeed.” His father’s indeed could wither grass. “And a ship-aiji was to deliver this message in person?”
“Jase-aiji knows me very well, honored Father, and may well do it very quickly, by computer. And one was in all courtesy required to assure my associates of my safety. If I could send a letter up—”
“The welfare of the station and the ship are dependent on the slender resources of Mogari-nai, and my son wishes to send letters.”
“But the transmission of letters is very fast, honored Father. A whole library could go right in the middle of someone talking, and the computers would never even slow down at all. I used to write every day, everyone does it, on the ship—letters go back and forth all the time, sometimes just a word or two.”
His father lifted both brows. “In which language, son of mine?”
Caught. “In Mosphei’, honored Father.” And he was determined not to look guilty. “You surely know Mosphei’. It seems useful to know.”
His father’s expression c
hanged not at all. “And you are in the habit of sending such personal letters?”
“Everyone does, honored Father! The system has all sorts of traffic. Even the lights going on and off are on the system. It just goes so fast no one notices. Computers are like that. Jase-aiji knows it would be no disturbance at all for me to send letters—if we could write back and forth, it would make me ever so happy, and I could find out things that go on in the station—that would be useful to you, would it not? And the computers would never slow down at all, never. The ship-folk send hundreds and hundreds of letters all day long, even silly one word letters, and the computers never blink—the lights go on and off and the air moves and everything runs without a mistake, all while thousands of letters go back and forth in every watch and everybody talks at once—just as if everyone were sitting in one room. And if one is asleep and not able to receive a message, it sits and waits for notice.”
“This seems quite a wonder,” his mother remarked into the silence that followed.
“We could have such a thing here, honored Mother! We could set it up if we had only a few computers. And it runs so fast! If I had had the system with me in Tirnamardi—”
“Uncle Tatiseigi would have had a seizure,” his father remarked.
“But if I had had it, honored Father, we would have been able to send letters as fast as a phone call. Just like that, only to hundreds and thousands of people at once. And we could have gathered even more people!”
“A few computers,” his father echoed, so far back in his train of thought that he had to blink to remember what he had said.
“Well, and one needs the connections between them, honored Father. But it takes hardly anything at all to run it, no extra power, and computers run so fast they always have time for letters or even whole conversations—they hardly notice at all while they do other jobs.”
“Indeed,” his father said, but this time it was not the withering version. In fact, his father had leaned a little his direction, and his eyes sparked with a faint interest. “One imagines the ship system my son used must be much more advanced than we have here.”