That, after his session with Tabini, calmly laying out for Tabini what he'd heard, what he suspected, what he thought were the only available human choices — in short, treason, of a virtually unprecedented kind so far as the history of the paidhiin. The act had hit a particularly sensitive spot in his nerves, with, in all that trying session, Tabini never showing any emotion but somber thought or amusement, never thanking him or reassuring him of the peaceful, constructive, wise uses to which the information he'd given would be put.
He found himself with very raw, very abraded sensitivities this afternoon, wanting not to feel as alone as he felt, and here Tano and Algini held that lure out in front of him, a demonstration that, yes, there was feeling, yes, it was almost — almost — what a human could access. He'd touched it. He'd tasted it. He'd relied on it for life and sanity in Malguri, and it might be all he could damn well look to for the rest of his life, thanks to choices he was making in these few desperate days.
And it wasn't, wasn't, wasn'treliable emotion. He could play voyeur to the experience of it; he was glad it existed for them. He was very glad for Algini's safety.
And perhaps that was the cold, sensible, atevi thing to feel right now. Perhaps it was all Tabini, for instance, would feel, or that Jago and Banichi would feel, if they were here.
Algini came to him and bowed with a pleasant, even cheerful face, unusual on glum Algini, and declared proudly, "I brought your baggage, nand' paidhi."
My God, was thatthe contents of the pasteboard boxes and cases piled on the antique carpets? All the things he'd left behind in Malguri, literally all he owned in the world, except a few keepsakes he'd left with his mother. He'd thought there was a remote chance of getting some things back, in the regret of a favorite sweater, his best coat, his brush, his traveling kit, the photos of his family — that was his whole damned life sitting in those boxes, and Algini had just brought it back, from his shirts and socks to the rings and the watch that Barb had given him.
"Nadi-ji," he said to Algini. The vocabulary of atevi gratitude was linguistic quicksand. "— I'm very surprised." He still wasn't hitting it. "Much as I value these things, I'd give them all to have you safe. It's very good, very dutiful, very — considerate of you to have brought them."
Which must have hit something. Algini looked astonished, grim and silent as he tended to be, and said, "Nand' paidhi, it's my job," the way Jago would sometimes remind him.
Even Banichi and Jago respected Algini — Tano, who'd taken until after Malguri to show his expressions, had him for a partner — and in this moment Bren saw qualities in Algini that he'd either been blind to, or that Algini hadn't let himsee before; qualities which said this was, in human terms, a man who did his duty because that was what he expected of himself.
And all those boxes. Saidin was observing from the doorway, and he gave the matter into her hands. "Please," he said, "have the staff do the arranging. I have all confidence in your judgment, nand' Saidin. Algini, please rest. Banichi and Jago aren't here. I don't know where they are. But I'm sure they'd say so."
"Nand' paidhi," Algini said quietly, "one would be glad to do that, thank you, yes."
A hell of a household, he said to himself, the lot of them in bandages and patches. Algini was ready to collapse on his face, by all he could figure, but before they could clear the boxes out of the vestibule, the light at the door flashed, the security wire went down, the door opened and Jago came in.
"'Gini-ji," Jago said, in some evident pleasure, and there were more bows, and even more shoulder-slapping than between Algini and Tano. "One is glad. One is very glad."
But straightway Jago looked to have remembered something forgotten, said, "Bren-ji, pardon," and gave him a message cylinder, one with Tabini's seal.
Bren halfway expected it. He stood in the sea of boxes, with his security looking on, with the staff beginning to carry away this item and that, and saw the date and time as this evening and the place as the blue room.
He wasn't ready, not emotionally — maybe not mentally. He hadn't been ready for anything they'd thrown at him yet, except in the conviction, already taken, that he had to try and he couldn't, on the moment's bereaved, deranged thought, do worse than Mospheira's President and experts had done, so far as falling into what the paidhi, the unique individual actually experienced in foreign negotiation, saw as a trap.
The paidhi could be wrong, of course.
The paidhi could be wrong up and down the board.
But he went out at the appointed time with his notes and his computer, and went to the lift in Jago's company. Now, if never before in his career, he had to focus down and have his wits about him.
And he was scared stiff.
He had to think in Mosphei' in a handful of minutes, which required a complete mental turnover — granted they could raise the ship at all, had to go back and forth between the two languages, which required a compartmentalization he didn't like to do real-time.
The official document delivered to him had chased Tabini's note: the formal announcement of decision on his request, a parchment heavy with ribbons and legislative seals, which he was requested to return, and which he carried in his hand. The legislatures had argued their way past midnight last night and concluded a general resolution to see where contact might lead: Would the paidhi, that immense document said in brief, kindly intercede and convey the salutations of the Association to the ship, the aiji willing?
Tabini's note had put it more succinctly, had given him the hour of the meeting and said: The legislature will re-enter session today on a special motion from the eastern provinces. That meant the rebel provinces were raising some issue.
And Tabini's note had continued: By suppertime the whole matter must be fait accompli by way of Bu-javid systems or we will be awash in additional motions.
Chimati sida'ta. The beast under dispute would already be stewed, as the atevi proverb had it: the aiji and the paidhi-aiji had authority granted by the vote last night until some vote today negated it or delayed it for study or did something else creatively pernicious to Tabini's interests. Therefore the haste.
The vote, however, did not convey authority from Mospheira — who had sent no response to his messages, no response to Tabini's message to the President of Mospheira. He hadhoped, he had remotely hoped — and knew he was creating serious trouble not only for himself, but for everyone in the Department who backed him, in proceeding without authority. He regretted that as a personal, calculated and depressingly necessary betrayal.
But the committee that would have to answer him had the nature of committees even on this side of the strait, and possibly throughout the universe: ask it a question and it felt compelled to make a formal ruling, which in the time frame of a Mospheiran committee, far worse than the ones he dealt with here, might arrive next year, once the message had hit — the President's council hardly moved faster.
If They, meaning the senior officials in the State Department, hanged the paidhi for it — at this point, chimati sida'ta, they had to catch him first.
If They wanted to talk to atevi, and he knew that, regardless of public posture, all but a handful of mostly-talk ideologues had no notion in the world of breaking off talk with atevi — again, chimati sida'ta. If Tabini moved fast, They had no choice but to deal with what was, and They still had to talk to Tabini through him, since Tabini wouldn't talk to Hanks, wouldn't talk to Wilson, or anybody else in the Department they could hasten through to promotion. By now, Hanks would have been dead, he greatly feared, if he hadn't specifically asked Tabini not to deal with the affront to his nation atevi-fashion; at any second violation of the Treaty he might not be able to argue Tabini out of a demonstration of atevi impatience with opposition to the paidhi they chose to deal with.