Inheritor

“Would he—” He knew these men well enough to ask about very delicate, ordinarily undiscussed, matters. “Would an ateva under such circumstances feelsuch man’chi to the cousins, say, if they succeeded in transferring the clan’s man’chi to themselves and away from his father’s line?”

“Not necessarily,” Algini said and, rare for him, a dark frown came to his face.

That warned him that perhaps he’d touched something more than theoretical with Algini. Or perhaps just inquired into too delicate an area of atevi emotion. So he asked no further.

And because it was necessary meticulously to inform the ones who guarded Jase: “Jase would like to go back to the ship to assure himself of his mother’s welfare. This he of course can’t do. Hesays he wished to call the ship and was prevented because, he says, he couldn’t get through security to reach me to authorize it. I can only guess. He does follow rules and schedules meticulously. Perhaps this results from living on a ship in space. I don’t know. And he may have been unwilling to face atevi with his emotions out of control—I’ve told him very emphatically not to do that. It may have prevented him from fully explaining his distress to security.” It was a cold and an embarrassing thing, to try to dice human feelings so finely that another mindset could grasp logically what was going on. “I would guess that he was already exhausted, either emotionally upset since I left or trying to achieve a good result—even my approval—on my return; and suddenly an emotional blow has hit him when he was alone, immersed in a strange language, surrounded by strange faces, and under my instruction not to react emotionally with atevi.”

“Ah,” Tano said, and both atevi faces showed comprehension. Of what—God knew.

“Remember,” he said, “that this is a human being, and that this is not trulyman’chi he feels but something as central to his being. Understand that he is under very extreme stress, and he’s trying not to react. But I have serious questions, nadiin, about the propriety of humans on that ship toward him, who may have slighted him in a major way. I want to know whether the ship tried to contact him, I want to know where that message went if someone attempted to contact him, and why he had to hear this bad news finally relayed from the island, from Yolanda Mercheson.”

“To whom has he attributed this failure of information?” Tano asked.

“I would assume, perhaps unjustly, to Manasi himself.” Manasi was one of Tabini’s security, who’d moved in to run the security office when he had Tano and Algini off with him. “He suspects atevi have withheld it from him. This is much more palatable to him than the thought that his people did. But whatever the truth is, whether it leads to atevi or to his ship, I need to knowthe truth, no matter how much truth I later decide to tell him.”

“Nadi Bren,” Algini said, “we will find the answer. We received no call from staff regarding any such matter.”

“Nadiin,” he said, “I have every confidence in you. I have every confidence in nand’ Dasibi and in nand’ Manasi. Please express it in your inquiry—please accuse no one. I leave it all to your discretion.”

Look not to his clerical staff for fault, and not to Manasi, he strongly felt, rather to the aiji’s staff on the coast, at Mogari-nai, where the great dish drank down messages from space and relayed them supposedly without censorship to him and through him to Jase. There had been politics at Mogari-nai, somewhere in the administration of that facility, which had withheld information from him on prior occasions, even against Tabini’s orders. It was a tangled matter of loyalties which one hoped, but not trusted, had been rectified last fall.

Look even—one could think it—to Tabini himself, who might have ordered the interception and withholding of that message for various reasons, including the reason that Bren-paidhi wasn’t at hand to handle the matter and they couldn’t know how Jase would react.

But Tabiniwould certainly have no difficulty reaching Tano and Algini if Manasi thought Jase was about to blow up.

Information stalled in the system? Some message lying on a desk awaiting action? Perhaps. He was sure that the messages at Mogari-nai were gone over meticulously by atevi who could translate—and any personal message to Jase, as opposed to the usual routines, would raise warning flags, and possibly go to higher security, which could appreciably slow down transmission.

“Nadiin,” he said, because he knew the extreme good will of these two men, and the conflict it might pose them, “if this thread should go under the aiji’s door, advise me but leave it untouched. It will be my concern.”

“Bren-ji, one will immediately advise you if that should be the case.”

That from Tano, with no demur from his partner. Their man’chi was to Tabini, to him only throughTabini, and what they said was with the understanding, unspoken, that he knew and that they knew that certain atevi damned well understood Mosphei’ and the dialect of the ship.

He suspected most of all that troublesome elements existed somewhere within the defense organization that protected the coast; and that such might have interfered, again, at Mogari-nai—or here, within the walls of the Bu-javid.

Tabini himself understood more Mosphei’ than he let on. Threads that went under the aiji’s door—or the hypersecret establishment of Mogari-nai—might cross and recross multiple times.

But an information slowdown could allow a critical situation to become a disaster. It also could signal a situation of man’chi; and that had to be fixed.

“That’s all I need,” he said. “And don’t scant your own rest, nadiin-ji. Have some junior person begin the inquiry tonight. Pursue it tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Tano said, accepting orders which Bren feared he would not follow, nor would Algini. They slept on questions no better than he did.

The question was always— howdid atevi interpret what humans asked, and how well did they forecast human actions? The War of the Landing hadn’t happened because both sides had meantto go to war.

So he sat, in the sitting room, in his robe, at a small, fragile desk, writing by hand in the formal court script, for Tabini:

Aiji-ma, Mercheson-daja has informed nand’ Jase of his father’s unexpected death, causes unknown.

Bearing in mind your other imminent concerns—

No, that wouldn’t do. He struck that last line: one left the aiji to the aiji’s concerns and didn’t express opinions on paper regarding Saigimi’s death being anyconcern to the aiji at all.

I have informed my staff regarding nand’ Jase’s normal behavior in such instances and inform you, aiji-ma, that I foresee a time of tension in the household. I am also concerned for meanings behind the failure of that message to get through to him or to me in a timely fashion. It seems to have come to Mercheson-paidhi first, which should not have happened, as Mercheson is not Jase’s superior, as the ship authorities well know. It was embarrassing and distressing to him to have heard such news from a source who should have been less well-informed than he was. If this was the choice of the ship’s officers, there may be implications in their behavior regarding this matter: this could have benign causes, in either too great a zeal to protect Jase from knowledge of his family’s distress or knowledge that I was absent from the premises and therefore that nand’ Jase was alone. Not benign, however, would be the determination of the officers of the ship that nand’ Mercheson should obtain quicker and more up-to-date briefings than they allow to nand’ Jase. These negative implications are certainly possible conclusions he might draw, and I am concerned.

Seeing, however, a third choice, that the withholding of information might be action emanating from your office, I have set my staff to learn the facts so that I may be accurate and prudent in assessments I present to you.