Foreigner

The fringe had done more good, in fact, for human-atevi understanding than all his speeches to the councils.

But if you ever wanted a source from which a lunatic, unlicensed assassin could arise, it was possible that one of the fringe had quite, quite gone over the edge.

Maybe the numbers had said, to one of the lunatics, one fine day, Go assassinate the paidhi and the atmosphere will stop leaking.

Thus far… Tabini and his own predecessors at least juggled well. They’d dispensed technology at a rate that didn’t overwhelm the economy or the environment, they’d kept ethnic differences among atevi and political opinions among humans well to the rear of the decision-making process—with the Ragi atevi and the Western Association they led profiting hand over fist, all the while, of course, by reason of their proximity to and special relationship with Mospheira; and, oh, well aware what that relationship was worth, economically. Tabini had probably had far more than an inkling for years where human advice and human techonology was leading him.

But Tabini’s association also enjoyed the highest standard of living in the world, was very fond of its comforts and its television. And Ragi planes didn’t crash into bridges any more.

Somebody after Tabini’s hide was the likeliest scenario that kept bobbing up—a plausible scenario, in which the paidhi could remotely figure, if whoever was after Tabini, knowing how difficult a target Tabini was, would be content to take out Tabini’s contact with humans and make that relationship more difficult for a season.

A new paidhi, a state of destabilization in which no paidhi was safe. Somebody might even be after a renegotiation of the Mospheira Treaty to spread out the benefits to other associations, which had been proposed, and which the Western Association had adamantly refused.

In that case the paidhi-aiji might well become a critical flash-point. He got along with Tabini. He liked Tabini. Tabini didn’t reciprocate the liking part, of course—being atevi. But Tabini and he did get along with all too much levity and good humor, perhaps—as some might see it, like that business at the retreat at Taiben, far too cozy.

Some might think it, even among the Ragi themselves, or among the outlying allies, each of whom, in the nebulous fashion of atevi associations, had at least one foot in other associations.

Maybe the better, special relationship he thought he and Tabini had—had brought this on, transgressing some boundary too rapidly, too inexpertly, in blind, too-confident enthusiasm.

Frightening thought. Appalling thought. Succeed too well and fail completely?

If Tabini’s government went unstable, and the network of atevi Associations shifted its center of gravity, say, eastward and deeply inland, where there was never that easy familiarity with humans, where ethnic and historical differences between Ragi and Nisebi and Meduriin could find only humans more different and more suspect than they found each other.

Atevi had been, with the exception of the tribals in the remotest hinterlands and the islands in the Edi Archipelago, a global civilization, at a stage when humans hadn’t been. Atevi explorers had gone out in wooden ships, done all those things that humans had, by the records, done on lost Earth—except that atevi hadn’t found a New World, they’d found the Edi, and damned little else but a volcanic, troubled chain of islands, not advanced, not culturally up to the double assault of the explorers from the East and the explorers from the West, who’d immediately laid claim to everything in sight and still—still, for reasons the ethnographers were still arguing—the same explorers met each other in those foreign isles and found enough in common and enough difficult about the intervening geography—the continental divide in the principal continent topped 30,000 feet—to trade not overland, but by sea routes that largely, after the advent of full-rigged ships, excluded the Isles where the two principal branches of atevi had met.

Atevi had, historically, cooperated together damned well, compared to humans. Hence the difficulty of getting atevi to comprehend correctly that humans had been very willing to be let alone on Mospheira, and not included in an association—an attitude which the atevi turned out not to trust. Shejidan had thrown itself into the breach, sacrificed its fear of outsiders for the foreign concept of ‘treaty,’ which it marginally understood as the sought-after association with humans. Which was one of the most critical conceptual breakthroughs the first paidhi had made.

To this day Tabini professed not to comprehend the human word ‘treaty,’ or the word ‘border,’ which he denied had real validity even among humans. An artificial concept, Tabini called it. A human delusion. People belonged to many associations. Boundaries might exist as an arbitrary approximate line defining provinces—but they were meaningless to individuals whose houses or kinships might be both sides of the line.

He lay in the dark, watching the moonlit curtains begin to blow in a generous cool breeze—the weather had greatly moderated since the front had come through last night. He hadn’t been in the garden this afternoon to enjoy it. Someone could shoot him from the rooftop, Jago said. He should stay out of the garden. He shouldn’t go here, he shouldn’t go there, he shouldn’t walk through crowds.

Damnedif Banichi had forgotten his mail. Not Banichi. Things regarding the person Banichi was watching just weren’t trivial enough to Banichi that they completely left his mind. This was a man that, in the human expression, dotted his i’s and crossed his t’s.

Second frightening thought.

Why would Banichisteal his mail—except to rob him of information like ads for toothpaste, video tapes, and ski vacations on Mt. Allan Thomas?

And if it weren’t Banichi that had gotten it, why would Banichi lie to him? To protect a thief who stole advertising?

Stupid thought. Probably Banichi hadn’t lied at all, probably Banichi was just busy and he was, ever since the nightmare flash of that shadow across the curtain last night, suffering from jangled nerves and an overactive imagination.

He lay there, imagining sounds in the garden, smelling the perfume of the blooms outside the door, wondering what it sounded like when someone hit the wire and fried, and what he should do about the situation he was working on—

Or what the odds were that he could get Deana Hanks out of the Mospheira office to take up temporary duty in the aiji’s household, for, say, a month or so vacation—God, just time to see Barb, go diving on the coast, take reasonable chances with a hostile environment instead of a pricklish atevi court.

Cowardice, that was. It was nothing to toss in Hanks’ lap—oh, by the way, Deana, someone’s trying to kill me, give it your best, just do what you can and I’ll be back when it blows over.

He couldn’t escape that way. He didn’t know whether he should call his office and try to hint what was going on—he ran a high risk of injecting misinformation or misinterpretation into an already uneasy situation, if he did that. There were code phrases for trouble and for assassination—and maybe he ought to take the chance and let the office know that much.

But if Tabini for some reason closed off communications tighter than they were, the last information his office might have to work with was an advisement that someone had tried to kill him—leaving Hanks de facto in charge. And Hanks was a take charge and go ahead type, a damned hothead, was the sorry truth, aptto take measures to breach Tabini’s silence, which might not be the wisest course in a delicate atevi political situation. He had confidence in Tabini—Hanks under those circumstances wouldn’t, and might do something to undermine Tabini… or play right into the hands of Tabini’s enemies.