He was inches from Tabini’s face. Tabini’s grip cut off the blood to his lower arm, the arm an ateva had once broken with his bare hands. It was irrelevant, that old pain. The atevi world swayed, tottered, threatened to crash.
“I might have done things better, aiji-ma. Even if what I said was my best advice.”
“Tell me, paidhi-ji. If one opens a door and discloses a room afire, is the fire one’s fault?”
“If it spread the fire, aiji-ma. If the paidhi has to be at fault, one is ready to be at fault.”
“This fire, this fire, paidhi-aiji, has been eating at the timbers under our feet for a very long time. It would have dropped us all into the flames sooner or later. You knew the hazards. You warned us. And we likewise are not fools. You showed us numbers that the counters could not refute, nor take into their systems, did you not?
Have you fed us poison?”
“No, aiji-ma.” But he had dismissed the danger of disturbed philosophers and outright fortune-tellers as secondary to greater dangers ever since the ship had arrived in the heavens, the ship that had brought them Jase, with all the attendant troubles.
Humans on Mospheira had begun to politic with the ship-folk and some of them had decided to determine the future of the atevi whose planet this wasc which was wrong, by his lights, morally wrong. He had fought that fight, for atevi ownership of their own world. He had gained atevi their place in the heavens.
But he was not, in the long run, atevi. He could not feel what atevi felt. His ‘place in the heavens’ had meant earth-to-orbit flight, and computers, which had meant human mathematics. Human ways of viewing the universe had come flooding into an atevi culture that rested so heavily on its mathematics, its perceptions of balance and harmony, its linguistic accommodations, its courtesies and orders of power and precedence. He had loosed the genie, he had known what he was doing, he had foreseen the dangerc that he might compromise what was atevi, even while trying to save them. Atevi could fix the problem—the mathematics embedded even in the atevi language was able to accommodate a mutable universec of course they could. Was there not the dowager? Was there not the Astronomer, and the mathematicians of the University? Didn’t they adjust their thinking and come back with uniquely atevi insights?
He had thought they could ride the whirlwind, and, being no mathematician, he had left the details to the scholars to hammer out.
And had not the aiji-dowager herself warned him that the whirlwind could not be dismissed? Wrong. Very dangerously wrong.
And Tabini had reinforced those rural fears, by more and more gifts of dazzling technology to even out the economy in the remoter regions, the aiji trying to balance economic advantage, and risking the whole structure. He had had his misgivings all along. He had progressively stifled them, in worse and worse revelations from the heavens. He had never argued with Tabini’s economic policy, his awarding of new construction to depressed regions. It ought to have lifted the whole country up.
He saw, as in a lightning flash, a landscape in convulsion.
And Tabini-aiji, son of a bloody, dangerous man, grandson of a conniving Easterner, had listened to him, attempting to be a different, modern kind of atevi ruler.
“Well, well,” Tabini said, “so we are where we are, paidhi. Our enemies have steadfastly refused to advance their philosophy or their mathematics in the last three hundred years. They may be factually wrong. But, gods less fortunate, they are persistent.”
“Television, an advancement,” Lord Tatiseigi scoffed. “And these computers are questionable and impudent.”
“You would never take the Talidi part, great-uncle.” This bit of politics from Damiri. “They decry computers. One is gratified to know Atageini clan has the sense to own them.”
“A damned nuisance,” Tatiseigi muttered. “They were supposed to report from the valley. And did they?”
“The Kadagidi destroyed the sensor,” Tabini said darkly, “and it reported that, nandi.”
“And what good is it after?” Tatiseigi retorted. “A telephone could have told us how many, and what direction.”
“Your telephones are compromised, nandi.”
“Not Atageini doing! We accepted this Murini under our roof in the interests of peace, when the whole region was in upheaval.
What alternative did we have but further conflict?”
“Did we not say,” Ilisidi interjected, “no mercy for Talidi leadership back when we had the chance? And did I not warn you, Tati-ji, that sheltering their ally was no solution?”
“What were we to do? Slaughter a guest? If you had moved in, he would have moved out sooner.”
“We had our own beast to hunt,” Ilisidi said, leaning on her cane, “and a great deal on our hands, nandi. We have our own province.
And where were you when matters turned difficult, Tati-ji?”
Bren found his hand gone numb.
“Dare you,” Tatiseigi cried, “and under our roof, and us sheltering Ragi guests, to our personal danger, accuse us?”
“Nandiin,” Bren said, “nandiin, one asks, one most earnestly asks—” Tabini was looking him past him when he spoke, but immediately those uncanny pale eyes snapped back to his, at close range. “One most earnestly asks,” he resumed, suddenly short of breath, and felt Tabini’s grip ease, as if Tabini had remembered whose arm he was holding. “Moderation in these events,” Bren finished.
“Moderation,” Tabini said. “Moderation, indeed.” Tabini let him go, and rested the same hand gently on his shoulder. “Baji-naji. The world is in upheaval. So do you have advice to give us, paidhi-aiji?”
His moment. His opportunity. Or the aiji was mocking him. “I have my report to give, aiji-ma.”
“The report,” Tabini said, as if such things were very far from his mind at the moment. “There will be many reports, paidhi-aiji, piles of reports. We have already heard where you have been, and what you have done, and promised in our name.”
“You say you hear,” Ilisidi muttered.
“We have never failed to hear your opinions, grandmother.”
“Heard us, and disregarded us,” Ilisidi said. No one daunted her in argument. “After which you hurled us off to space and went your own way!”
“We put you in charge of educating our heir, establishing atevi authority in the heavens—and making agreements in our name and in the name of the aishidi’tat. This was not an inconsiderable job for an Easterner and an outlander, grandmother! Wherein was this any disrespect of your views?”
“Well, well, outlander is it, blood of mine? And we have accomplished both tasks quite well, have we not? Now need we straighten out this current mess for you? Dare these fools in the south say it was the paidhi’s choice? It was yours! It was nothing but yours!”
It was decidedly time to move aside. But the aiji still rested a hand on his shoulder.
“Mani-ma,” Tabini said. “In all due respect—”
“Oh, pish! Are we fools? This movement has been brewing and bubbling for far more than the mere decade of the paidhi’s close involvement. Toss a treasure into a crowd and all dignity and common sense vanish in the scramble, and everyone emerges bloody. Toss human treasure into the same situation and watch sensible folk start scrambling for this and that piece of value, for factories to spoil their skies and new goods to corrupt their common sense! You loosed the prospect of wealth, new importance for whole provinces, new fortunes, entire new houses elevated or created by this rush to space, with all the upheaval in rights of precedence and legislative power— Gods less fortunate, grandson, what did you expect in this condition but a riot?”
“And confusion,” Tabini said. “Never forget confusion and folly, which always attend change, do they not? Change what exists, and toss what-will-be into the air, and, yes, certain fools lose all certainty about the rules.”