Inheritor

But he couldn’t ask the first question he’d had in years that Toby would have delighted in answering.

So with the appropriate baggage, just as a second dawn was breaking, they were gathering in the foyer for the promised trip—Banichi and Jago, Tano and Algini.

And himself with Jase.

“The baggage has gone, Bren-ji,” Jago said. “The car is waiting.”

Subway car, that was. His security was in a good mood: it lifted his spirits—shifted the world back into perspective. It was an emergency at home, yes; but, dammit, Toby could handle it—Toby was in the city, Toby was at their mother’s apartment. Toby could deal with their mother and Toby didn’t have to call him up and rage at him, when it was the first damn time Tobyhad showed up to handle one of their mother’s crises, be it the divorce from their father, be it the lawsuit over the sale of the mountain cabin, be it aunt Gloria’s husband’s funeral, be it—God knew what. Thistime Toby was on duty and Toby could take care of their mother and the two of them could do the talking they should have done when Toby’d married to get away from the family and run off to live on the north shore having kids and making money hand over fist. Toby was the one she’d held up to him as the model son—well-married, stable, somebody to go visit.

Mother’d held Toby and Toby’s familial situation up to him as the way heought to be, but she’d damned sure phoned the University every time there was a crisis to get Brenacross town. That was understandable, since it was in the same city; but even after he’d gone into the field and the strait had separated them, she’d not phoned the north shore for Toby to disturb his family, come home, and hire a lawyer for her. No, Toby’d had a familyto consider, so she’d phoned the mainland and wanted Bren-dearto drop the governmental crisis and come home and fix things, which sometimes he could and sometimes he hadn’t been able to. For a string of years every time he’d come home on vacation she’d had a crisis specifically designed to get him involved the second he stepped off the plane, to the point where he’d begun to think of marriage to Barb as an insulation.

It had gotten so his nerves were strung tight every time he knew his mother needed something, because needhad gotten to be the relationship between them, and he’d already puzzled out that fact.

It had gotten to be the relationship between him and Barb, too, starting with hisincreasing need for her to meet that plane and shield him from his inability to say no. Someday he’d have married her so he’d have a wife to take precedence over what his mother needed. He’d puzzled that out, too.

Grim thought. Sobering thought. He could get aggravatedwith Barb, but the fact was that his cheerfulness once he’d arranged for Barb to meet the plane, the alternative being his mother arriving with a list of grievances and plans for his time, told him maybe—just maybe—his relationship to Barb breaking down in crisis wasn’t just a case of Barb rushing to Paul Saarinson’s soft life. Barb, being a healthy individual, had perhaps realized she wasn’t up to being a support for a man who got off the plane every few months needingto be reassured and needingto be made happy and not to have troubles poured into his ears during his vacation.

The paidhi’s home life and the paidhi’s love life were neither one damn good and never had been, was the truth. The I-need-youbusiness was no way for any two adults to have a relationship, not mother-son, not man-wife.

Not even brothers.

And it was about time their mother learned to call on Toby, because Toby was the one of her two sons she was going to have in reach; and it was about time Toby learned to define that relationship in a way he could live with. That was the plain truth. And they were all going to have to get used to it. She couldn’t get Bren-dear home again.

Maybe duty to his family said he should resign his professional life, come home and live with it and do all those familial, loyal things, including suffer through a marital relationship that wouldn’t work and a relationship with his mother that wasn’t going to improve, and maybe it would improve his moral character to do that.

But it wasn’t his job. It wasn’t what other, equally important individuals relied on him doing for reasons a lot more important to the world than his personal problems. And he rather thought, as much trouble as it might make for the family, he should tip Toby off to the need-youbusiness and the fact he was entitled to put his foot down and define his relationship with mama otherwise—early—before it ate Toby alive.

“Bren-ji?” Jago asked as he took his place in the elevator car.

“Tired,” he said. “Tired, Jago-ji.” He managed a cheerful face. “Time for a week on leave.”

Banichi pressed the button. The elevator carried them down, down to the cavernous tile and concrete of the restricted subway station beneath the Bu-javid.

It was a short walk to the subway car, in a larger space than Jase had been in since he’d come into the Bu-javid by this same route.

“All right?” he asked Jase, seeing that little hesitation, that intake of breath.

“Fine,” Jase said, and walked steadily beside him, Banichi and Jago in front, Tano and Algini behind, down past the train engine to the two cars which were waiting with the requisite House Guard and a Guild pair from the aiji’s staff—Bren’s eye picked them out.

“Nadi?” Banichi took up his post just inside, and they boarded, Tano and Algini going to the baggage car with junior security, Banichi and Jago staying with them.

“Rear seat’s the most comfortable,” he said to Jase—he recalled saying that the day he’d escorted Jase tothe hill, in the same car, on his way to the confinement in which Jase had lived. They took their seats. Jago, on pocket com, standing by the door, talked to someone, probably intermediate to the Bu-javid station that governed use of the tracks, clearing their departure.

The door shut and the car got underway.

Jase sat with nervous anticipation evident as the shuttered private subway car rumbled and thumped along its course down the hill and across a city Jase had never seen except from the windows of the Bu-javid and once from the air.

“Nervous, nadi?”

“No, nadi.” Jase was quick to say so. And sat, hands on knees, braced against the slightest movement of the car.

But a lot of strangeness, Bren could only guess, was surely impacting Jase’s senses right now, from the shaking of the car, the smells, the noise.

Evidently some of them were alarming sensations from a spaceman’s point of view, as were large open spaces: the echoes disoriented him, maybe. Maybe just the size did. Bren had no idea, but to reassure Jase he adopted an easy pose, legs extended, ankles crossed, and kept talk to a minimum while Jase’s eyes darted frantically to every different rattle of the wheels on the switching-points, the least change in sound as they exited the tu

“We’re on the surface again,” Bren explained. “We’ve been in a tu

Jase didn’t look reassured. And probably Jase knew he was overreacting, even suspected he looked foolish in his anxiety, but they had one more rule in effect, and Jase had agreed to it as Jase had agreed to every other condition: no matter what, Jase wasn’t to speak anything but Ragi on this trip. If the car wrecked, he’d made the point with Jase, screamin Ragi. He might not be able to hold to it throughout, but if that was the ideal, maybe, Bren thought, it would encourage Jase to shift his thoughts into the language totally, the way Jase had existed while he was gone on the tour. If it didn’t do everything he’d hoped, in terms of forcing Jase into Ragi, it might at least force Jase back into that mindset so that he had a chance of arguing with him.