Foreigner

Check, and mate.

Put him in one hell of a position, Tabini had. Thanks a lot, he thought. Thanks a lot, Tabini.

But we need you. Peace—depends on you staying in power. You know they’ll replace me. Give you a brand new paidhi, a new quantity for the number-counters to figure out and argue over. Switch the dice on them—leave them with a new puzzle and humans not reacting the way atevi would.

You son of a bitch, Tabini-ji.

The time seemed to stretch into hours, from terror to pain, to boredom and an acute misery of stiffened muscles, numb spots, cold metal and cold stone. He didn’t hear the thunder anymore. He couldn’t find an angle to put his legs that didn’t hurt his back or his knees or his shoulders, and every try hurt.

Imagination in the quiet and the dark was no asset at all—too much television, Banichi would tell him.

But Banichi had either turned coat—which meant Banichi’s man’chihad always been something other than even Tabini thought—or Banichi had landed in the same trouble as he was.

In his fondest hope, Banichi or Jago would come through that door and cut him free before the opposition put him on their urgent list. Maybe the delay in dealing with him wasbecause they were looking for Banichi and Jago. Maybe Jago’s quick exit when he’d last talked with her, and that com message from Banichi—had been because Banichi knew something, and Banichi had called her, knowing theyhad to be free in order to do anything to free him…

It was a good machimi plot, but it didn’t happen. It wasn’t goingto happen. He just hung there and hurt in various sprained places, and finally heard the outer hall door open.

Footsteps descended the stone steps into the outer room—two sets of footsteps, or three, he wasn’t entirely sure, then decided on three: he heard voices, saying something he couldn’t make out. He reached a certain pitch of panic fear, deciding whatever was going to happen was about to happen. But no one came, so he thought the hell with it and let his head fall forward, which could relieve the ache in his neck for maybe five minutes at a time.

Then voices he’d decided were going to stay in the next room became noises in the hall; and when he looked up, a shadow walked in—someone in guard uniform, he couldn’t see against the light, but he could see the sparks of metal off the shadows that filled his field of vision.

“Good evening,” he said to his visitor. “Or is it the middle of the night?”

The shadow left him, and nerves ratcheted to the point of pain began a series of tremors that he decided must be the stage before paralysis set into his legs, like that in his fingers. He didn’t want that. He hoped maybe that was just a guard checking on him, and they’d go away.

The steps came back. He was supposed to be scared by this silent coming and going, he decided—and that, with the pain, made him mad. He’d hoped to get to mad… he always found a state of temper more comforting than a state of terror.

But this time more arrived, bringing a wooden chair from somewhere, and a tape recorder—all of them shadows casting other shadows in the light from the doorway. The recorder cast a shadow, too, and a red light glowed on it when one of them bent and pressed the button.

“Live, on tape,” he said. He saw no reason to forbear anything, and he stayed angry, now, though on the edge of terror. He’d not deserved this, he told himself—not deserved it of Tabini, or Cenedi, or Ilisidi. “So who are you? What do you want, nadi? Anything reasonable? I’m sure not.”

“No fear at all?” the shadow asked him. “No remorse, no regret?”

“What should I regret, nadi? Relying on the dowager’s hospitality? If I’ve passed my welcome here, I apologize, and I’d like to—leave—”

One shadow separated itself from the others, picked up the chair, turned it quietly face about and sat down, arms folded on the low back.

“Where did you get the gun?” this shadow asked, a stranger’s voice,

“I didn’t have a gun. Banichi fired. I didn’t.”

“Why would Banichi involve himself? And why did it turn up in your bed?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Has Banichi ever gone with you to Mospheira?”

“No.”

“Gone to Mospheira at all?”

“No. No ateva has, in my lifetime.”

“You’re lying about the gun, aren’t you?”

“No,” he said.

The tic in his left leg started again. He tried to stay calm and to think, while the questions came one after the other and periodically circled back to the business of the gun.

The tape ran out, and he watched them replace it. The tic never let up. Another one threatened, in his right arm, and he tried to change position to relieve it.

“What do you project,” the next question was, on a new tape, “on future raw metals shipments to Mospheira? Why the increase?”

“Because Mospheira’s infrastructure is wearing out.” It was the pat answer, the simplistic answer. “We need the raw metals. We have our own processing requirements.”

“And your own launch site?”

Wasn’t the same question. His heart skipped a beat. He knew he took too long. “What launch site?”

“We know. Yougave us satellites. Shouldn’t we know?”

“Don’t launch from Mospheira latitude. Can’t. Not practical.”

“Possible. Practical, if that’s the site you have. Or do any boats leave Mospheira that don’t have to do with fishing?”

What damned boats? he asked himself. If there was anything, hedidn’t know it, and he didn’t rule that out. “We’re not building any launch site, nadi, I swear to you. If we are, the paidhi isn’t aware of it.”

“You slip numbers into the dataflow. You encourage sectarian debates to delay us. Most clearly you’re stockpiling metals. You increase your demands for steel, for gold—you give us industries, and you trade us micro-circuits for graphite, for titanium, aluminum, palladium, elements we didn’t know existed a hundred years ago and, thanks to you, now we have a use for. Now you import them, minerals that don’t exist on Mospheira. For what? For what do you use these things, if not the same things you’ve taught us to use them for, for light-lift aircraft you don’t fly, for—”

“I’m not an engineer. I’m not expert in our manufacturing. I know we use these things in electronics, in high-strength steel for industry—”

“And light-lift aircraft? High-velocity fan blades for jets you don’t manufacture?”

He shook his head, childhood habit. It meant nothing to atevi. He was in dire trouble, and he couldn’t tell anybody who urgently needed to know the kind of suspicions atevi were entertaining. He feared he wouldn’t have the chance to tell anybody outside this room if he didn’t come up with plausible, cooperative answers for this man.

“I’ve no doubt—no doubt there are experimental aircraft. We haven’t anything but diagrams of what used to exist. We build test vehicles. Models. We testwhat we think we understand before we give advice that will let some ateva blow himself to bits, nadi, we know the dangers of these propellants and these flight systems—”

“Concern for us.”

“Nadi, I assure you, we don’t want some ateva blowing up a laboratory or falling out of the sky and everybody saying it was our fault. People find fault with the programs. There are enough people blaming us for planes that don’t file flight plans and city streets piled full of grain because the agriculture minister thought the computer was making up the numbers—damned right we have test programs. We try to prevent disasters before we ask you to risk your necks—it’s not a conspiracy, it’s public relations!”

“It’s more than tests,” the interrogator said. “The aiji is well aware. Is he not?”

“He’s not aware. I’m not aware. There isno launch site. There’s nothing we’re holding back, there’s nothing we’re hiding. If they’re building planes, it’s a test program.”