Defender

Bren and Banichi and Jago walked along with Tano and Algini—rare that those two simultaneously left the security station, but it wasn’t likely to develop a crisis in half an unattended hour, if things were going as usual.

“And how are things?” he asked Tano. “Any calls?”

“Oh, very well here. No calls. Jase Graham will be your guest tonight at di

Bindanda, that loan from Tatiseigi, was a very creditable chef, besides having done double duty as security and anything else that came to hand. Narani, his head of staff, would have made the judgement call accepting Jase as a guest tonight, but that was no problem. His staff had standing orders that Jase might be his guest whether he was absent, present, or en route.

Besides, Jase had so wanted to go down on this trip, having found a rare quiet moment that he could take leave of his regular duties. It hadn’t happened. Ramirez had called at the last moment, senior captain, and there it was: no trip.

“I trust there are no crises. Nothing behindthis invitation.”

“Not that we know,” Tano said—which covered a very extensive information-gathering apparatus. “The priorities committee met on schedule. Lord Geigi sent word to our staff that there were no surprises on the agenda.”

“Very good. I have to see him, tomorrow if I can. There’s progress on the robots—they’re here, in fact.”

“ Yes, paidhi-ji.” Not only Tano, but Banichi and Jago were listening, absorbing, putting pieces together, the most competent staff any man could ask for. They knew instantly what it all meant. They swept up every crumb of detail he gave them and would bend heaven and earth to make things work on schedule.

“One trusts the broadcast of the memorial made it up here.”

“Yes,” Algini said.

“Curious, was it not?”

“Indeed,” Tano said.

“Do we have any theory what it meant?”

“None, on the surface,” Banichi said.

“What it meant,” Jago said, “likely defines itself in meetings yet to come. Curious, indeed, nandi.”

But not their meetings. Not their risk. He’d been of use, perhaps, only as a symbol of the space effort. Tabini surely knew about the robots his shuttle was shipping up off his continent

… and thatwas something Tabini would a

Clearly space would be a topic in the upcoming session, and Tabini showed his cards—so to speak.

Home again, home in every sense, where he had his own information-gathering apparatus. He had considerable power onworld. It was nothing to the resources he had here, in what had become his office, his residence, his steel-and-plastics world.

Home, and setting to work with a whole new set of parameters, given Gi

There was a subtle anxious mindset that took over when he was on the planet, in the constant knowledge that at any moment, at any slight miscalculation, he could meet a bullet and end all the work he did or hoped to do—and with it, hope for lives that he had no right to risk. Visits down there, under any level of security at all, had gotten to be a calculated risk. Up here there was more and more to be done, and down there the pace of change pushed the planet’s less stable residents to greater and greater agitation. There was simply no replacement for him, and he had to admit he had no right, no personal right to take stupid chances with his life. That meant downhill skiing was right out, along with bad-weather flying or boating, and he hadn’t been on a mechieta’s tall back in four years. Not that he didn’t miss those things, dream of those things—but at least—at least, up here, things ran, and he could stop anticipating disasters.

The curving corridor apparently ended in a door like all the other doors, but Algini keyed open the security lock, let them through into a whole self-contained world. It was the door of the Little Bu-javid, as atevi called it. Lord Geigi’s residence was at the start of this new corridor, the paidhi-aiji’s at the end, and two unoccupied apartments in the middle, ready for any atevi lord who found it necessary to be here on short notice: Ilisidi had been the first inspiration, and the Astronomer Emeritus had visited as recently as half a year ago.

It was atevi decor from the first moment they passed the door, a muted color here and there, a great deal of white or near-white. The hall-end had the baji-naji conspicuous, next Bren’s own doors.

Baji-naji. Chaos and overthrow: appropriate enough emblems not only for the space program but for the paidhi-aiji’s household and this whole section: they all found more than a little humor in the notion.

But the baji-naji had a table beneath it, a wooden table with a single river-rounded stone: chaos underlain with, comparatively speaking, the most stable thing in the universe, their own precious world, the place that sent them.

His major domo Narani had done that understated exterior arrangement for the hall. Atevi visitors had greatly admired it. A photograph of it had reached the news services, as a result, and Narani, his modest major domo, from a small rural estate, with a peasant-bred practicality to his designs, had accidentally created a widely copied fashion throughout atevi society, an entire artistic movement in Shejidan that found approval on both sides of the conservative-liberal battle. His back-to-basics traditionalism that harked back to country modes and primitive expressions—so the practitioners of kabiu’teradeclared. Narani might have had a whole new career on the planet, a respected master—if he were willing to leave here, which Narani was not.

In point of fact, Bren thought, he simply likedNarani’s arrangement. In stabilizing the chaos around the place, it did satisfy the heart—God knew what wonderful things it did to atevi sensibilities—and to him, yes, both the baji-naji and the stone were very apt, very reassuring.

Home for certain. The door opened. There were bows, there were pleasant, familiar faces… Narani was, of course, foremost, an older gentleman, kindly and very much in charge. There was Bindanda, a roundish fellow of great creative talent—not only in the kitchen. A handful of staff who chanced to be near, men and women who came simply to fill out the number and make a good showing in the hall.

“Nand’ paidhi,” Narani said. “There will be di

“Very acceptable, Rani-ji.” He shed the coat into Narani’s hands, and the bulletproof vest with it. The temperature was perfect, the place was perfect. Here his staff would steer him into the right clothes and the right place at the right time and he utterly could stop thinking about schedules and protocol crises. Once he would have called it lazy. With the pace of decisions his job had become, he called it necessary.

“When my baggage arrives, unpack it. Packets. All labeled. I’ve bought gifts for all the staff.—Danda-ji, your spices should arrive. And yes, the video games. I’ll deal with my messages tomorrow if there are none urgent.—Is there, however, anything pending from Lord Geigi?”

“Oh, indeed,” Narani said, and signaled a younger servant, who presented the message-bowl for visual inspection: it contained a good number of small scrolls, one of which was Geigi’s message-case: he knew that one very well. He picked that one out and read it on the spot.

“Geigi advises me he wants a meeting tomorrow. Noon would be excellent, if it suits him. Anything my staff arranges with his staff will do very well.”