"Masji sig' triti didamei'shi."
"First atevi word to learn, sir, is aiji. That's the title of the atevi president — more powers than 'president,' but it's the closest translation. His personal name is Tabini: call him Tabini-aiji, and call that name whenever and every time in a conversation you say a sentence to him: it's basic courtesy. He'll await and expect your acceptance of the entire Treaty. Atevi don't understand making exceptions during initial agreement: please consider the Treaty document as a sweeping statement of principle, closer negotiations to follow. Atevi law is based on equity stemming from such broad agreements. — Have you any special word, sir, to the aiji of the Western Association?"
"Tell him we hope for friendly contact and we'll stand by for your document transmission."
"Thank you, sir. I'm concluding now. — Daiti, nadiin tekikin, madighi tritin distitas pas ajiimaisit, das, das, das, magji das."
"Pai sat, paidhi-ma."
He set the computer on the table, with the last-moment help of an aide, flipped up the screen, pulled out the line to the phone connector on the table.
Then he called a file; actuated; and the Treaty document flew, presumably, to the atevi earth station and bounced to the ship.
That simply, that easily, from a phone connection on a desk in the Bu-javid.
Mind-boggling even to the arbiter of technology.
And evidently mind-boggling to the heads of committee at the table. Usually at a meeting there were half-attentive looks and the momentary fidgets or a consultation of notes or aides. Not this time. There was solemn anxiousness, absolute quiet. They might not yet realize what had happened. They certainly didn't know what all that chatter back and forth had been.
"So what did he say?" Tabini asked.
"I asked, aiji-ma, what he would say to the aiji. He said, quote, 'We desire peaceful contact and we'll stand by for the Treaty agreement transmission.' End quote. I sent it. I did substitute one word in that: his 'peaceful' contact carries an expectation of nonwarlike interaction that has no atevi equivalent."
"Does it change the meaning of contact?" the head of Judiciary asked.
"It expresses routine politeness. Sometimes it has a casual and not highly specific application, meaning not-war, or, equally, can mean a real yearning for association. It's that word friend, nadi, the one that always confuses translations."
"A pest of a word," Tabini said.
"Always, aiji-ma. Even another human has to figure out how the other human means it at the moment."
"Intended confusion?"
"It can be." The atevi leap to suspicion was possibly hardwired. It was at least fast. "I could have predicted he'd use it — in a way I find it reassuring that he did use it. But he doesn't realize you won't know its nuances. I suspect there's no one on the ship that's ever met another language. They want to know about the Treaty document — and I can equally well predict they'll ask if they got it all. They won't expect it to be that short. Their own legal documents try to nail down every minute exception and possible eventuality in advance."
"This seems excessive trouble," Tabini muttered.
"Tradition. Law — I'm not sure I know the history behind it. But they try to think of all the problems that could come up."
"Negative thinking. Is this not your expression?"
"But they will almost certainly do it. I confess I'm daunted, nadiin, aiji-ma. I just hadn't realized operationally until I talked with this man how far back I have to start explaining our mutual history of relations. Clearly I'm notdealing with the university on Mospheira: I'm going to have to interpret very heavily. No one on the ship is going to know how to avoid troublesome concepts. I'll have to explain them as I go."
"How accurate can this interpretation be?" Judiciary asked.
"As accurate as the paidhi's recognition there's a difficulty, nandi, which is why I must ask, if you hear something disturbing, please interrupt and object. Context makes a vast difference. So does historical background. I'll advise you of the words I find suspect; and I find the idea of creating a specialist from among them — startling as it was to me — is an excellent notion, aiji-ma. Granting they can find someone with the ability and if I can teach the right ideas to this person — it may be a vast help." He found himself more nervous than if he'd been facing guns and grenades. One didn'tsecond-guess the aiji. Or any other atevi lord. But he had to supply the objection he saw. "But if I detect the person isn't capable or that the interface is getting worse — I request the authority, aiji-ma, nadiin-ma, to shut this person off immediately from information and to reject this contact. If that should be, we may be thrown back on the resources of the university. And we may have to go to them, if I find I can't deal with the translations alone."
"This would have severe implications," Tabini said. "And I would rather you succeeded, paidhi-ji."
"I would most earnestly rather I succeeded, aiji-ma." He'd been more anxious than he knew. A number of conclusions were coming home to roost, one of them a surmise that, since he'd put himself on very shaky ground with the university and the Department, he might still have to deal with Hanks as the representative of Mospheira and himself… God only knew. As Tabini's, he supposed.
It wasn't a situation he wanted. But that little jarring note in the negotiation had rung alarm bells all up and down his nerves: not that he hadn't expected it, but that word friendly, that no regular contact he used would have dared use, advised him of dangerous problems.
Friendlycontact.
The War memorials and the fact that humans lived on an island weren't part of the ship captain's growing up, the captain's constant awareness, the captain's conceptual reality. He didn't know that lives were in danger. Or didn't know that they were in danger for the reasons that they were. Mospheira had transmitted a history of the war. But knowing the details of history wasn't the same as stopping for that minute of silence at 9:16 A.M. every Treaty Day; or seeing that time frozen on the clock in the photos of Alpha Base. He'd been there once. Every paidhi went there once.
"Aiji-ma," he said, "I'll prepare another document for transmission. A handbook of protocols, by your leave. I can assemble it by tomorrow, out of— the dictionary."
"As the paidhi will," Tabini said. "Whatever the paidhi deems necessary."
It was an appalling grant of power. It meant — in atevi terms — he bore direct responsibility, along with that grant of power.
He folded up his computer quietly, thinking, God, he'd put his neck in the noose now. After that it came down to operational details, a handful of answers he needed to give, a confirmation of meeting dates, all of which he had to sit through, but his mind wasn't on committee housekeeping, or even the few questions committee members asked.
It was the moment, in a curious retreat of his mind, in which he really, definitively said good-bye forever to Barb. In which he thought of the letter he'd write to his mother, and Toby.
In which he held himself and his motives and his mental condition entirely suspect. The aftershocks of an irrevocable, previously confident decision were rumbling through the mental landscape, disturbing precarious balance. He felt slightly sick at his stomach. He questioned his motives and his sanity this time from hindsight, not theoretical actions. Reality always put a texture on things, a chaotic topography of imperfections, that imagination had foreseen as smooth and featureless. Now it was all in past-tense conversation between two minds, not one mind reasoning with itself. Now it was interaction with a very potent and distance-wise inscrutable third party, as well as a Department that was going to ask the paidhi what in hellhe thought he was doing.