Another silence, long and tense, in which the thunder of an outside storm rumbled through the stones.

“Have you always told the truth, nadi?”

“In such transactions? Yes. To both sides.”

“ Ihave questions for you, in the name of the aiji-dowager. Will you answer them?”

The walls of the trap closed. It was the nightmare every paidhi had feared and no one had yet met, until, God help him, he had walked right into it, trusting atevi even though he couldn’t translate the concept of trust to them, persisting in trusting them when his own advisors said no, standing so doggedly by his belief in Tabini’s personal attachment to him that he hadn’tcalled his office when he’d received every possible warning things were going wrong.

If Cenedi wanted to use force now… he had no help. If Cenedi wanted him to swear that there wasa human plot against atevi… he had no idea whether he could hold out against saying whatever Cenedi wanted.

He gave a slight, atevi shrug, a move of one hand. “As best I can,” he said, ‘I’ll answer, as best I personally know the answers.”

“Mospheira has… how many people?”

“About four million.”

“No atevi.”

“No atevi.”

“Have atevi ever come there, since the Treaty?”

“No, nadi. There haven’t. Except the airline crews.”

“What do you think of the concept of a paidhi-atevi?”

“Early on, we wanted it. We tried to get it into the Treaty as a condition of the cease fire, because we wanted to understand atevi better than we did. We knew we’d misunderstood. We knew we were partially responsible for the War. But atevi refused. If atevi were willing, now, absolutely I’d support the idea.”

“You’ve nothing to hide, you as a people? It wouldn’t provoke resentment, to have an ateva resident on Mospheira, admitted to your councils?”

“I think it would be very useful for atevi to learn our customs. I’d sponsor it. I’d argue passionately in favor of it.”

“You don’t fear atevi spies any longer.”

“I’ve told you—there are no more secrets. There’s nothing to spy on. We live very similar lives. We have very similar conveniences. You wouldn’t know the difference between Adams Town and Shejidan.”

“I would not?”

“We’re very similar. And not—” he added deliberately, “not that all the influence has come from us to you, nadi. I tell you, we’ve found a good many atevi ideas very wise. You’d feel quite at home in some particulars. We have learned from you.”

He doubted Cenedi quite believed that. He saw the frown.

“Could there,” Cenedi asked him, “regarding the secrets you say you’ve provided—be any important area held back?”

“Biological research. Understanding of genetics. That’s the last, the most difficult.”

“Why is that the last?”

“Numbers. Like space. The size of the numbers. One hopes that computers will find more general acceptance among atevi. One needscomputers, nadi, adept as you are in mathematics—you still need them. I confess I can’t follow everything you do in your heads, but you have to have the computers for space science, for record-keeping, and for genetics as we practice it.”

“The number-counters don’t believe that. Some say computers are inauspicious and misleading.”

“Some also do admit a fascination with them. I’ve heard some numerologists are writing software… and criticizing our hardware. They’re quite right. Our scientists are very interested in their opinions.”

“In atevi invention.”

“Very much so.”

“What can we possibly invent? Humans have done it all.”

“Oh, no, no, nadi, far from all. It’s a wide universe. And our ship did once break down.”

“Wide enough, this universe?”

He almost said—beyond calculation. But that was heresy. “At least beyond what I know, nadi. Beyond any limit we’ve found with our ships.”

“Is it? But what use is it?”

Occasionally he met a new atevi attitude—inevitably astonishing. “What use is the earth, nadi? What use is the whole world except that we’re in it? It’s where we are, nadi. Its use is that we exist. There may be more important positions in the universe, but from where we stand, it’s all that isimportant.”

“You believe that some things are uncountable?”

The heresy pit again. He reached for an irrefutable answer, knowing that, if the wrong thing went down on tape—the extremists had him. “If one had the vision to see them, I’m sure one could count them.”

“Does anyone have universal vision?”

Another atevi sect, for all he knew. “I wouldn’t know, nadi. I’m certainly not that person.”

Damned if Cenedi believed the numerologists. But what Cenedi might want for political reasons, he had no way to guess. He wanted out of this line of questioning.

“More tea?” Cenedi asked him.

“Nadi, thank you, I have some left.”

“Do you suspect me personally as an enemy?”

“I don’t know. I certainly hope not. I’ve found your company pleasant and I hope it to continue.”

“There is nothing personal in my position, nand’ paidhi.”

“I trust so. I don’t know how I could have offended you. Certainly not by intent.”

“Heresy is not the charge here, understand. I find all the number-counting complete, primitive foolishness.”

“But tapes can be edited.”

“So can television,” Cenedi said. “You provided Tabini-aiji with abundant material today.”

The television? He’d put it from his mind, in the shock of reading Tabini’s letter. But now that Cenedi said it, he factored it in with that letter—all the personal, easy questions, about himself, his life, his associations.

Double-cross, by the only ateva he absolutely trusted with his life, double-cross by the aiji who held all the agreements with human civilization.

Tabini had armed him against assassins—and in the light of that letter he couldn’t prove the assassins weren’t Tabini’s. Tabini gave him a gun that could be found and traced by the markings on its bullets.

But when he’d used it, and drawn blood, Banichi had given him another. He didn’t understand that.

Although perhaps Banichi hadn’t understood then, either, and done the loyal thing, not being in on the plot. All his reckonings ran in circles—and now Banichi’s gun was gone from under his mattress, when they could photograph anything, plant any piece of evidence, and fill in the serial numbers later… he knew at least some of the tricks they could use. He’d studied them. The administration had madehim study them until his head rattled with them, and he hadn’t wanted to believe he’d ever need to know.

Not with Tabini, no.

Not with a man who confided in him, who told him official secrets he didn’t, out of respect for this man, convey to Mospheira… “How many people live on Mospheira?” Cenedi asked.

“You asked that, nadi. About four million. Four million three hundred thousand.”

“We’ll repeat questions from time to time, just to be sure.—Does that count children?”

Question after question, then, about support for the rail system, about the vetoes his predecessor had cast, about power plants, about dams and highways and the ecological studies, on Mospheira and on the mainland.

About the air link between the island and the mainland, and the road system in Mospheira’s highland north and center. Nothing at any point that was classified. Nothing they couldn’t find out from the catalogs and from his private mail, wherever that was going.

Probably they hadfound it out from his mail, long before the satellites. They might have, out of the vacation catalogs, assembled a mosaic of Mospheira’s roads, cities, streets, might have photographed the coastal cities, where regular cargo flights came in from Shejidan and flew out with human-manufactured electronics, textiles, seafood and pharmaceuticals.

“Do you have many associates on Mospheira, nadi? What are their names?”