Defender

He wasn’t in condition to confer with anyone, as it was. The Jase conversation had been the last. Even without the brandy he suspected he would have opted for bed, being just too dog-tired.

But there was more than that business afoot, more than Jase, more than Ramirez, more than Tabini’s dealings with the provinces.

“Is there any word from my brother?”

“No, nadi-ji. Go to bed.”

“Good idea.” Tonight he just wanted to fall over and be unconscious for a few hours. “I’m going to sleep, Jago-ji. Are you coming to bed?”

“Soon,” Jago said, and added, because she knew how curiosity consumed him, drove him, made him crazy: “Banichi likewise says get some sleep.”

At least they didn’t need him. Some things, if they rested in safe hands, he didn’t have to ask. He simply directed himself back to the bedroom, shed his clothes into a servant’s care, all but fell onto the mattress and pulled up the covers. His body temperature was sinking fast.

But he didn’t sleep. He shut his eyes, wondering where Toby was, in what situation, whether there would be a phone call before morning.

After half an hour he got up, went to the computer and keyed in a message. Toby, I got your letter. I’m concerned. Call.

He sent it. It had to pass through the security station out there. His staff would know, and probably be distressed about it. But he didn’t explain. He went back to bed, no easier in his mind.

Jago eventually came to bed, a considerable weight on the other side of the mattress, interrupting an exhausted haze that was not quite restful sleep. He knew she was there, and dropped back off, safe.

Safe. Companioned. All things local in their places.

He couldn’t oversee the others.

Chapter 6

No phone call in the morning. Perhaps, Bren said to himself, amid breakfast, the health crisis was over and Toby was on a flight back to the coast. If Toby could possibly reach a phone, he’d likely call, and if he couldn’t reach a phone, it likely meant he was traveling—which was as good news as a phone call.

In the meantime, morning courtesies included a hike all the way to the Construction Operations office to meet officially with their nextdoor neighbor, Lord Geigi—electric runabouts were available for the trip, but undignified, in Bren’s island-born view of the universe—besides heartily cursed by walkers in the halls. Bren, for his part, preferred walking, for the exercise, if nothing else: he’d watched certain officebound sorts put on the pounds, and fought the tendency.

Besides, in long stretches of hall where Jase swore on his life there were no bugs, he could talk at leisure with his staff, much as he and Banichi would talk in the open country down on the planet.

“So how has the world taken the aiji’s address, by now?”

“In curiosity,” Banichi said. “In great interest. Great interest and an expression of discontent in the East.”

Hardly surprising.

“Any clues why he wanted me?”

Tabini, and the ringing of that bell that held every imagination entranced, entrapped.

“One is not satisfied,” Banichi said. “We’ve reviewed the tape. But we haven’t discovered the absolute answer, Bren-ji. We have not, not in the configuration, the seating, or in anything said during the ceremony. Legislative proceedings are under seal, down in Shejidan. And thatis troubling.”

“Something is very peculiar, nadi-ji.”

They were coming into a more trafficked area now, beyond the limits of any secure conversation. Remarkable sight, atevi and humans in about equal numbers, coming and going on business, atevi and humans in office clothes and workman’s clothes—regulations-wise unable to say more than a handful of words to one another—notably please go, please come, please stop… please call the supervisor immediately, in the most meticulously memorized and numerically neutral courtesy. But by that means the common folk of two species did talk, if only in those approved, memorized phrases for known situations.

They tried to be careful. But at certain points they had to cooperate.

And sometimes it came down to things ludicrous on the surface—at least to one side of the question—but fraught with the most serious emotional reactions.

Fish, for instance, and the urgent reason he had to talk to Geigi about robots and a fish tank.

They reached the construction office, a reception area inside of course tastefully arranged: small scroll-paintings and a reception table, with a bowl for correspondence—and an inexpensive soft drink dispenser for human visitors. Geigi was nothing if not even-handed, though the split in decor made an atevi visitor look twice.

They were expected. The attendant rose and bowed, and immediately opened the door with a key push.

“Nandi.” Security on duty just inside was as easy, as cordial: Tano had called ahead.

And in this easy place, Bren left Banichi at the security station to take his ease with Geigi’s staff, there to have a soft drink, likely, and exchange information.

Meanwhile he went on into the i

“Bren-ji.” Geigi rose—great courtesy, for a lord in his own territory. He was a jovial man whose whole attitude toward life was experimental—and, for an atevi lord, very spur-of-the-moment. He swept business aside, knocking two storage disks onto the carpet in the process, and personally dragged a chair up to the side of his desk. “Tea—tea, will you, Bren-ji? I swear I could do with a cup. We have this most amazing infuser—” Geigi himself went to a domed creation on the bookcase counter, put a plastic cup beneath, and created a cup of tea.

“Thank you.”

Geigi hastily created another, stirred it with a plastic rod. “Not so fine as that, but hot.”

“Very welcome.” One was appalled. A tea-maker. A Mospheiran tea-maker. In an atevi lord’s office.

“Back from the world and all, and a puzzling trip, I take it.”

“I have no idea why I was called, nandi, I truly don’t.”

“What, pray, is the aiji doing down there?”

“Mystifying us all. I wish I knew. So does everyone.”

“A requiem for Valasi-aiji, and not a whisper of ill intent to the living or the dead.”

“Not a one. And I can’t answer.”

“Can’t.”

“Truly can’t, Geigi-ji. I was down there. I came back none the wiser. But!” It was rude to change subjects on a gentleman, but Geigi was an intimate of long-standing, so intimate he risked his reputation with truly marginal tea. “I had a seatmate on the flight up, nandi. Gin Kroger.”

“Gin-nadi. With news?”

“Oh, with more than news, nand’ director! The robots are with us, and more certainly on their way.”

“A wonder!”

“I talked with Jase last night, filed intent to have someof our windfall diverted to your fish tanks, my closest of associates, and we, you and I, nandi-ji, need to put our heads together, so to speak, and set priorities and requirements and a timetable before someone else gets a bid in.”

“This is marvelous!”

“If the tanks can do as they need, Geigi-ji. If they can provide the needful food.”

“I have every detail.” Geigi leapt up and went to a central cabinet, among the other high, clear-doored shelves and cabinets that graced this very modern office. From it he extracted a stack of much-abused paper, brought it to the desk and spread it out, sketches of a circle containing many little circles.

It was an actual engineering plan, an exploded diagram of what he had last seen as a series of sketches on scrap paper: an aquiculture tank, with triple walls and heaters and solar panels and details he hadn’t seen.