Inheritor

“So you want to come out here. And it’s not what you expected. And nowyou trust me.”

“Everything you’ve told me,” Jase began, but now hisvoice was shaking. “Everything so far makes sense. I believe Yolanda’s leaving the island is tied to what Deana Hanks is doing, it’s tied to everything you’ve told me. I’ve been trying all the way out here to find a way to tell you what was going on, but every time I tried I ran into something elsethat wasn’t what you’d led me to think. I didn’t know but what Yolanda was leaving the island withHanks. But I don’t think so, now. By everything I’ve heard, I don’t think so. These people outside don’t make me think so. The business in the apartment didn’t make me think so. The dowager doesn’t. But I just haven’t known what to do, Bren. I tried to find out the truth—and at the first you were lying to me, and you work for the Mospheiran government, andfor the aiji, and I didn’t know where you stood, and everything was coming apart.”

That made sense. The fishing trip. The damned fishing trip. Every lie they’d told each other, every difference of perceptions two hundred years of separation made in two sets of humans.

And if Yolanda Mercheson was pulling out of Mospheira, there were going to be some angry and desperate people on the island, who were only going to make matters more tense and more desperate for all of them remotely involved.

Forces on various sides of atevi concerns were moving on the mainland. Everything that had been going forward was still in motion and now human troubles were linked into it.

“You and I had better level with the dowager, is what we’d better do,” Bren said. “There are operations going on all over the coast. It may be a hostile reaction Hanks meansto stir up, if your partner’s given away her intentions. If she and Hanks have had a falling-out, it could be whyHanks is doing what she’s doing in the first place, trying to start a war here so the ship won’t deal with us. Or it may be as simple and stupid as I think it is: she doesn’t know what in hell she’s messing with. Years in the program and a week being withatevi and she still doesn’t figure it.—Jago-ji, nadi.” He changed languages, and went for the door, concerned at the time slipping away from them. “How would Yolanda come, Jasi-ji? By boat? By plane?”

“She can’t fly. That’s certain. She couldsteal a boat. But the storm—”

“Handling a boat’s no given, either. Stay with me.” He walked into the communications center, walked past concerned technicians and the boy and the dowager’s security to speak to Ilisidi herself. “Nand’ dowager,” he said, “my partner says that the other ship-paidhi has quit her post.”

“Quit.”

“And is leaving the island and coming to the mainland for refuge. Likeliest by boat. We don’t know when. We don’t know where.”

“And thatis in these messages you read?”

“No, nand’ dowager,” Jase said for himself. “I knew by a phone call days ago. Nand’ Bren had noknowledge of it. I wished finally—” Jase’s voice was trembling, and steadied. “I wished to tell it before now. I apologize, nand’ dowager.”

“It was a code by conversation,” Bren interjected, “aiji-ma. Security couldn’t possibly detect it. I didn’t.”

“Well,” Ilisidi said, and while a foul temper was possible, when it was entirely justified, in fact, it didn’t happen, though nerves all around were drawn tight. “Well.” Ilisidi stood leaning on her cane. “And in this night of human secrets, in this night with serious consequences on every hand and fools attempting to overthrow all established order, what will happen on the island, nand’ paidhi? What hashappened? Disasters? Or better news.”

Bren found his hands trembling again. He didn’t want to go into the business with his family and he was sure someone on Ilisidi’s staff had read the message by now, since it had sent Jase rushing after him, and had stalled everyone until he could sort matters out in the restroom.

“I’m sure that they’ll try to stop her, nand’ dowager.” He had one resource left, one thing Shawn had given him, and as best he could figure it was time to try it.

It was a co

He also figured that by the time he’d found the note, far later than Shawn had intended, things were vastly changed and the people in the State Department and in the Defense Department who were in charge of such things had probably put something lethal on that access, something that would render his computer worse than useless.

He’d no facilities or knowledge to figure out such destructive actions. He’d not dare co

But, foreseeing the day, he’d backed up what he could. And he couldn’t avoid the direct contact. It was a reciprocating set of operations that would flow back and forth—if he got in.

He used the keyboard. He entered what he had. He sat, with a human by him who wasa computer tech from a system vastly more advanced than his, who didn’t, Jase said, know as much about what Jase called these early machinesas he knew about atevi. Jago was there. Banichi was. Cenedi was. And at the critical keystroke, the computer telltales lit up, flickered, and kept flickering. He sat and listened for the vocal output, which he didn’t believe would come.

But relays were clicking. It sounded as if relays were clicking. On the State Department lines, if that was how he’d gotten in, there was a robot, not a human operator. If the numbers were good, the call went to another robot.

But if what he feared was true, the second robot would be deactivated, the one that once had been able to get him through to the Foreign Office.

Next relay. He expected a voice. He could hardly believe it.

Then another click dashed his hopes. Click. Pause. Click. Click. Click.

“They must be routing the call to the far side of the island,” he said to Jase, and even as he said it, he suspected the call was doing exactly that: those were repeated long-distance co

It rang.

“ You have reached—” It was the damn recording. He punched a manual code. And it rang another number.

“ Foreign Office.”

It was a young voice. Female. Very young. His heart sank.

“Shawn Tyers,” he said. “Code check. This is an emergency.”

“ Sir?”

“The Foreign Secretary.” God, God, they were hiring fools. “Put me through to the Foreign Secretary. You punch code 78. You have to do it from your console.”

“ Is this Mr. Cameron?” There was alarm in the voice. Excitement. And he didn’t want to admit it, but he saw no choice.

“Yes. It is. On diplomatic business. Life and death. Put me through.”