He’d been able, on clear nights on Mt. Allan Thomas, to see the station just around sunset or sunrise. He didn’t keep up with its schedule the way he had in his youth, when Toby and he had used to go hiking in the hills, when they’d used to tell stories about the Landing, and imagine—it was embarrassing, nowadays—that there were atevi guerrillas hiding in the high hills. They had used to have imaginary wars up there, shooting atevi by the hundreds, being shot at by fictitious atevi villains, about as good as the atevi machimi about secret human guerrillas supported by egomaniacs secretly concealing their base aboard the station… the Foreign Star, as atevi had called it in those long past and warlike days.
At least they’d achieved a common mythology, a common past, a common set of heroes and villains—and which was which only depending on point of view.
He never had mentioned to Tabini that his father was Polanski’s descendant several illegitimate generations down the line, the Polanski who’d generaled the standoff on Half Moon Beach, the one that had kept atevi reinforcements off Mospheira.
Nothing Poianski’s remote descendant had anything to do with—nothing, in his present job, that he wanted to admit to.
One made progress as one could. He wished atevi children didn’t see humans as shadow-players and madmen; he wished human children didn’t play at shooting atevi in the woods. The idea came to him of making that a major theme in his winter speech to the assembly… but he didn’t know how one got at all the film and all the television on both sides which kept reinforcing it all.
But not totally smart, with realities as they were, to be standing with the fire at his back. Jago had pulled him away from this very window last night… a danger from the windows or the roof of the other wing seemed stupid. But anybody could have a boat on the lake, he supposed, though not close enough to give an assassin a good target. Anybody could land on Malguri’s shore, give or take the walls and the cliffs below the walls, which were formidable.
He stepped back and began to close the window. Lights flashed on all about him. An alarm began to ring as he blinked in the glare of electric light, and slammed the window shut and latched it, heart beating in utter startlement, with the sound of bare feet crossing the wooden floor of the next room.
Tano showed up, stark naked, gun in hand, Djinana close behind him, and Maigi after that, Maigi dripping wet and wrapped in a towel, with the thump of people running out in the halls, everywhere in Malguri, the alarm still sounding.
“Did you open a window?” Tano asked. “Nadiin, I did, I’m sorry.”
His rescuers drew a collective breath as the latch rattled in the next room, and Tano dismissed Djinana in that direction with a wave of his hand.
“Nadi, they’ve brought us on-line again,” Tano said, “Your security had rather you not open the windows, for your own protection. Particularly at night.”
Djinana had let someone in from the outside hall. Cenedi showed up with Djinana and a couple of the dowager’s guard, to hear Tano say, “The paidhi opened the window, nadi.”
“Nand’ paidhi,” Cenedi said. “Please, hereafter, don’t.”
“I beg your pardons,” he said. The alarm was still going, jangling his nerves. “Can someone please turn off the alarm?”
Cenedi gave the orders. It still took time to sort out, and the oil lamps all had to be put out before he could get his rooms clear of staff.
He sank down on the side of his bed after the clatter and the commotion had died, after the doors and windows were shut, asking himself where Banichi had been and what black thoughts the dowager must be having about him at the moment.
Damned sloppy, having an alarm system down with the power. It wasn’t Banichi’s style. He didn’t think it was Cenedi’s. He didn’t think he’d seen everything that guarded Malguri. Solar-batteried security, he’d bet on it. They had the technology.
It didn’t keep the paidhi from waking the house and looking like a fool.