Not politic, though an option at this point; but, always to take into account, he spoke for Tabini, at least until arrested, and if Jase missed appointments it wasn't the paidhi's job to cajole Jase into keeping them. The paidhi's job was to report the missed communication to Tabini, which he had done, translate Tabini's response, which he hadn't yet received, always supposing Tabini wasn't trying to restrain his temper and weigh the paidhi's value future and present before ordering him dropped into a quiet place out of the way of trouble.

Harm him — he didn't think so. But he'd given Tabini one hell of a headache, and reason to think that the human advice he'd had wasn't that reliable.

He hopedthe Jase Graham matter and the whole agreement with the ship wasn't becoming one more item to blow up in his face today, unraveled by better bribes from Mospheira. It would total out his account with no few skeptics in the hasdrawad and the tashrid, and if he could guess a reason for the prolonged silence, he'd bet Phoenixwas using whatever means it had to discover what Mospheira did have.

If he had to place an interpretation on Graham's missing two days contacting him, they coincided well with Mospheira's new proposal, and he didn't expect the diplomatic obstacles at this point to fall like dominoes: things didn't work that way, not with so many interests to protect.

Which meant, given the initiative toward the ship might fail, the Mospheiran initiative and his offer of cooperation with the President might fail.

In which case — back to square one, with vastly damaged credibility, even granted Tabini left him in charge of anything. If they had to go back to negotiations, Tabini wouldn't budge from what he saw as already his — though Tabini might sound as if he were budging — and come after the matter from a new vantage, one of those small privileges of a leader with consensus pre-voted and as yet unwavering. And he might want to cut off communications for a while. Not what the paidhi would suggest. But —

Maybe — maybe the ship had found some technical glitch in the lander. Maybe they found their target date slipping for safety reasons and they were waiting for reports.

Maybe it just took a long time to analyze the imaging he was sure they were using.

One certainly had to ask what the captain's motives were for speaking so frankly with Mospheira, considering he had to know the mainland picked up the conversations. They could encode, he was relatively certain, using things the Defense Department knew and he didn't.

But the ship didn't do that, unless there was something going through the telemetry.

He could think himself in circles. Nothingwas worse than sitting in an informational blackout.

He held himself to tea, not liquor, told himself even the quantity of what he'd been pouring down wasn't without effect on the nerves, and he had to stop gulping entire cups of it as the only relief from thought and action — tea that lacked alkaloids was still native to the planet and contained minute amounts of stimulant that could add up.

But, damn, it did keep the mouth from drying. He thought of asking for it iced, which would scandalize the house — and wished the weather would take that pending turn to cooling. The active sea-winds of morning had become a sultry Shejidan night, and good as the concealed ventilation generally was, he longed for autumn, when he could pile blankets on the bed and sleep the night through. Sleepwas increasingly attractive, even lying abed was — and he still had to draft that letter to Ilisidi.

"Nand' paidhi," a servant came to the tableside to say, "nand' paidhi, the telephone."

Jase, he thought, and left his chair in haste. His glum mood evaporated — he was ready to get on with the business of the ship, the site, the landing, the whole future that otherwise he couldn't deal with.

"Bren?"

Barb.

"Hello? Bren?"

It took a second to catch his breath, switch mental gears, switch languages so he could thinkwhat Barb wanted. "Yeah," he said.

"Bren, what's the matter?"

"There's nothing the matter."

"You asked me to go over to your mother's."

He remembered. He remembered the conversation with Toby, which didn't rest in the same memory area with Tabini, Ilisidi, and Jase Graham. "Yeah."

"Bren, are we all right to talk?"

"Yeah, yeah, go ahead."

"She's all right. A little spooked. Somebody wrote some letters, somebody kept calling on the phone, leaving messages on the system, got some of her private numbers."

"Private numbers."

"Just things they shouldn't have accessed. She said she was all right. The police are on to it."

Things they shouldn't have accessed. Access numbers. Access to systems. Not random off-the-street trouble, then. That smelled like the Heritage agitators. Connections. Professionals, who'd ring your phone and drive you crazy. "Yeah. Yes. You tell her I'm fine?"

" Sure." Asilence followed. " So how are you?"

"Fine."

"You sounded a little vague when you picked up."

"I suppose I did. I was expecting a business call. Sorry."

"So how are you?"

"The cast is off. No real problems. Thanks for chasing that down."

" Yeah, thanks, Bren."

"So how are you getting along?"

" Fine." Another small silence. " I sort of expected you to call me."

He didn't know what he'd heard for a moment. He replayed it twice in his head and drew a measured breath.

"Bren?"

"Barb, there is no choice. There is no choice. I won't be calling you. You did what you had to do, I think you did the right thing —" He found a certainty in his own mind that he wasn't going back to Mospheira again. Not soon. Or not the same.

But he couldn't say it. Not to Barb. Not to Shawn. He couldn't let them draw the conclusion, or Tabini lost his fair broker. "I think you ought to work on it, give it a chance. Paul's a nice guy."

" I loveyou, Bren."

It wasn't even painful to hear that maneuver, except in the response and comfort-giving it asked of him. And in what it said about her that he'd never wanted to face. That had rung alarm bells the last time they'd talked. And the timing of the phone calls. And her message to him after he'd left. And her not showing up at the hospital. He'd thought in her turning away from him she was giving himthe reality dose. He doubted all of a sudden that she had it to give.

"Bren?"

Tears. He heard the quaver.

"I can't help you," he said. "I can't fix it. You hear me?"

" Bren. You don't know what it's like, youdon't know, you've got the whole government around you, and we protect you from it, everybody protects you from it, because you come home to rest, but we live with it, we live with it all the time, your mother's scared to answer her phone, your brother's scared— they're saying you've gone over, they're saying you're selling us out, and people believe it — people at work believe it, and it's ourfault, isn't it? And we're left here shaking our heads and saying, Oh, no, Bren's not like that, Bren wouldn't do that, Bren'sjust getting what he can get— but I've got reporters ringing my phone, I've got messages stacked up on the system, my parents are scared—"

"All the more reason to keep your distance from me."